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SOCIETY SENSATIONS 



SOCIETY SENSATIONS 



CHARLES KINGSTON 

tl 

Author of 
Famous Morganatic Marriages," "Royal Romances and Tragedies, 

etc. 



NEW YORK : 
E. P. 3 X & COMPANY 



.U<o 



PRINTED IN fiKKA'I BRITAIN 






FIRST Pl-RLISHED IN I922 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 

I. THE FICKLE LOVER 

II. THE MORDAUNT CASE 

III. THE COLIN-CAMPBELL DIVORCE SUIT 

IV. PAUPER OR PEER ? 

V. A FAMOUS AMERICAN ACTOR AND HIS 
ENGLISH WIFE . 

VI. A REAL MELODRAMA 

VII. SIR CHARLES DILKE 

VIII. A BOGUS WEDDING 

IX. THE NEWMAN HALL TRIAL 

X. LORD AND LADY ELGIN . 

XI. LORD AND LADY CLONCURRY . 

XII. LORD WILLIAM LENNOX AND HIS WIFE 

XIII. THE TALBOT CONSPIRACY 

XIV. A SENSATIONAL ELOPEMENT . 

XV. THE GARDNER PUZZLE . 

XVI. THE INCONVENIENT MARRIAGE 



PAGE 

9 
24 

45 
60 

73 

98 

112 
127 
141 

156 
170 
184 
199 
213 
227 
240 



SOCIETY SENSATIONS 



CHAPTER I 

THE FICKLE LOVER 

In 1846 the twelfth Viscount Mountgarret died, 
and was succeeded in the title and estates by 
Henry Edmund, the only son of his younger 
brother, the Hon. Henry Butler. For eight years 
the new peer was left undisturbed in his posses- 
sions, but he must have been aware that it was 
rumoured that he had no right to the viscounty 
and the property and that the common gossip 
of the county was to the effect that he was ille- 
gitimate. 

However, as long as his relatives accepted him 
as the head of the family he did not mind, but in 
1854 the gathering storm burst. His cousin, 
Pierce Somerset Butler, eldest son of Colonel the 
Hon. Pierce Butler — the latter being the fourth 
brother of the twelfth viscount — claimed the 
peerage and the property, alleging that Henry 
Edmund was the offspring of a bigamous marriage 
and that according to the law of the land he was not 
legitimate. 

9 



io SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

Thus began the most remarkable and sensational 
trial in the history of the peerage. It put thous- 
ands of pounds into the pockets of the lawyers, 
ruined for a generation a noble family, and exposed 
to the public gaze the eccentricities of an un- 
scrupulous adventurer, who was the hero and 
villain, in turns, of love affairs in Ireland, Scotland, 
and England. 

The cause of all the trouble was the Hon. Henry 
Butler, third son of the eleventh, and brother of the 
twelfth, Lord Mountgarret. Endowed by nature 
with a magnificent physique, a fine presence, and 
a handsome countenance, he combined with these 
advantages a personality which made him irre- 
sistible with the fair sex. 

He was, however, far from being effeminate, and 
his ability as a horseman was only equalled by his 
skill with the pistol and the sword, and he displayed 
an alacrity to use either of these weapons which 
made his critics careful not to speak disrespectfully 
of him in his presence. 

In fact, Henry was a typical devil-may-care 
Irishman, and if it had not been for the lawsuits 
which arose out of his behaviour it would be easier 
to imagine that he was a creation of Charles Lever 
and not a real person. Henry was involved in 
several love affairs before he startled his friends 
and infuriated his father by eloping with the pretty 
young wife of a neighbour. 

Mrs. Barrington had fallen under the sway of the 
handsome and fascinating friend of her husband, 
and for his sake she sacrified everything in order 



THE FICKLE LOVER n 

to share his fortunes in England. But her lover 
quickly grew tired of her. 

He had not sufficient money to meet his own 
expenses, and he grudged spending any on her, 
and when he had exhausted his patrimony of forty 
thousand pounds he promptly deserted her, and 
left her to die in misery and squalor two years later. 

It was a characteristic beginning to a life of many 
vicissitudes. Henry Butler seems to have believed 
that the world was made for his pleasure and that 
no laws were binding on him. He was not dis- 
turbed when his father refused to read his letters 
and his relatives cut him. 

Henry had complete faith in himself to overcome 
all his difficulties, and there was always the — in 
his opinion — certainty of making a rich marriage 
when it was time for him to settle down. Some 
months after he had parted from Mrs. Barrington 
he found it necessary to leave London for Brighton. 

He was not fond of the seaside, but the per- 
sistency of a couple of money-lenders compelled 
him to vanish from the gaming-clubs, and in due 
course he arrived at a hotel, penniless but ani- 
mated by an optimism born of confidence in 
himself as a card-player. Brighton, however, 
did not provide any pigeons to be plucked, and 
he was reduced to idleness. 

But this apparent misfortune changed his luck, 
for one evening when he was wishing he was else- 
where, two ladies entered the hotel, one of whom 
was known to him. She promptly introduced 
her companion, and thus the whole course of his 



12 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

life was altered by this meeting with Mrs. Cole- 
brook. , 

At the time they met Henry Butler was in 
the thirties, and there were no outward signs of 
the life of dissipation he was leading, and Mrs. 
Amanda Colebrook was charmed by his manner 
and enchanted by his unique personality. 

He did not know anything about her except 
her name, but he was flatteringly attentive from 
the first, and when the following morning they 
met again on the front, she cordially accepted 
his offer to escort her back to the hotel. 

There was a reason now, however, for polite- 
ness. In the interval between the first and 
second meeting he had learned a greal deal about 
Amanda Colebrook, and he was aware that the 
stylishly-dressed woman with the dainty figure 
and lovely complexion was the widow of a Scots- 
man, Colonel Colebrook, an extensive landowner, 
who had left her fifteen thousand a year and 
control over another thousand per annum, to be 
spent on her two young daughters. 

Thus Mrs. Colebrook was a rich woman, for 
in the early part of the nineteenth century an 
income of two thousand five hundred pounds 
was equal to six times that amount now, and 
Henry Butler, impecunious and hunted by his 
creditors, resolved to cultivate the widow and 
marry her. 

He realised how fortunate he would be if he 
married both beauty and money, and when Mrs. 
Colebrook showed that she liked him and did not 



THE FICKLE LOVER 13 

resent his rather bold courtship of her, he felt 
that he had victory in sight. 

At the first favourable opportunity he pro- 
posed to her at the hotel. It was less than a 
fortnight since his introduction to her, but they 
seemed to have known each other for ages, and 
he was confident of what her answer would be. 
To his amazement, however, she murmured that 
marriage was out of the question. He pressed 
her for an explanation, and then she revealed the 
awkward fact that if she married again she would 
lose her interest in her first husband's estate. 

Butler was staggered by the collapse of his 
scheme, but the widow, who had a very accom- 
modating disposition, smiled at his stupefaction. 
She had a solution of the problem and she in- 
timated that she would become his mistress 
rather than part from him or her fortune. There 
and then they agreed to live together as man and 
wife, and, to further their ends, Mrs. Colebrook 
took her maid, Sarah Stride, into her confidence. 

The irregular partnership involved constant 
changes of lodgings, and when the first child was 
born the widow very nearly followed the infant 
to the grave. She effected a marvellous recovery, 
however, and when a year later she told Butler 
that she was expecting another child they had a 
long and serious discussion. 

Butler's position was now worse than ever, 
and he was being haunted by a fear that he would, 
after all, lose the widow and her money. He had 
discovered that she was a flirt and easily in- 



14 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

fluenced, and it worried him to know that at any 
moment she pleased she might throw him over 
and marry someone else. 

It was not unlikely that a rich man would fall 
in love with her, and, if that happened, Mrs. 
Colebrook would not mind losing her fortune. 
It was this latter consideration which caused 
the Irishman to propose to Amanda that they 
should solve the problem by journeying to Scotland 
and getting married there secretly. 

Scotland was the best place in the world for a 
secret ceremony, for they need only accept each 
other as husband and wife in the presence of their 
faithful and devoted Sarah Stride and the brief 
ceremony would constitute a legal marriage. 

Mrs. Colebrook agreed to his suggestion, and 
it was arranged that she was to return to 
Edinburgh, where she had a house in North- 
umberland Street, and resume her career as a 
hostess. Later on Butler was to arrive, and at 
a suitable time and place the marriage was to be 
celebrated. 

The widow and her two daughters were wel- 
comed by their old friends in the Scottish capital, 
and she began to entertain on a large scale, and 
almost every night her house was packed with 
guests. 

After her more or less shady association with 
Henry Butler in England and her forced avoidance 
of her respectable acquaintances, her popularity 
in Edinburgh came as a tonic, and she felt in- 
clined to regret her friendship with Lord Mount- 



THE FICKLE LOVER 15 

garret's son, a friendship, moreover, which had 
deprived her of the society of her equals. 

Very soon, however, she had another and a 
stronger reason for wishing to forget Butler, and, 
strangely enough, the reason was another Irish- 
man, though of a different stamp. John Taaffe 
was the exact opposite of Henry Butler so far as 
character and means were concerned. 

Fond of literature and science, he had come 
to Edinburgh to make the acquaintance of several 
of its most distinguished men, and it was at a 
reception given by a famous judge that he was 
presented to Mrs. Colebrook, who, having recently 
seen Butler, was agreeably surprised to find an 
Irishman whose manner was quiet and respectful, 
and who was not given to intoxication. 

It was another point in favour of Taaffe that 
he was rich. She had postponed her marriage 
with Butler on account of the fact that she had 
had a miscarriage, and, although she had promised 
him to become his wife as soon as it was safe 
to do so without risking the loss of her income, 
she was quite ready to fall in love with someone 
else. 

She was attracted by Taaffe, and to her pleased 
astonishment he was so impressed by her that he 
waited for no encouragement, and declared his 
passion for her immediately. 

Here was a predicament for the pretty widow ! 
She had lost her infatuation for Henry Butler, 
and she was in love with Taaffe, and she knew 
that if Butler discovered the real state of affairs 



16 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

he would probably challenge the younger man to 
a duel and kill him. 

It was this latter reason which determined her 
to keep her second lover hidden from her first, 
and it looked as though she would have an easy 
task, for Butler had friends in the garrison, and 
he failed to visit her house for weeks at a time, 
preferring to spend his nights with his boon com- 
panions, drinking and gambling. 

Meanwhile, Taaffe was a daily visitor at Mrs. 
Colebrook's, and when he proposed she refused 
him, but added that if he liked she would be his 
mistress. Her offer was accepted, and the partner- 
ship had scarcely begun when Butler, who had 
probably had an inkling of the existence of a 
rival, called at Mrs. Colebrook's at midnight. 

He was intoxicated and in one of his most 
pugnacious moods, and when the butler refused 
him admission he made a ferocious attack on 
the door which roused the street. To prevent a 
scandal Mrs. Colebrook ordered her servants to 
allow him to enter, and a moment or so later he 
was rushing up the stairs screaming threats of 
vengeance. 

When he arrived on the second landing he found 
the widow in her nightdress, standing with her 
back against the door of her bedroom. " What 
is it you want ? " she demanded, concealing her 
terror under a countenance of simulated anger. 
" The fulfilment of your promise to marry me," 
he answered, or, at least, counsel for the claimant 
to the title alleged that that was what he said. 



THE FICKLE LOVER 17 

What exactly ensued^ formed the crux of the 
great trial. The Attorney-General for Ireland, 
who appeared on behalf of Pierce Somerset Butler, 
was positive that there and then three servants — 
one of whom was Sarah Stride — were sent for 
and made to listen while Henry Butler and Amanda 
Colebrook in their hearing declared themselves 
husband and wife. 

Counsel for the twelfth Viscount Mountgarret, 
the son of Henry Butler, was equally positive that 
no such scene took place, but the only means 
we have of forming an independent judgment is 
a study of the sequel to that noisy visit of the 
nobleman's son to the house in Northumberland 
Street, Edinburgh, at midnight. 

One thing is certain, Amanda somehow suc- 
ceeded in pacifying Butler and persuading him to 
leave quietly, for he did not demand admission 
to the locked bedroom, and for this, no doubt, 
the widow was grateful, seeing that it contained 
the trembling John Taaffe. 

Mrs. Colebrook and the Hon. Henry Butler 
came together again for a few weeks, and Taaffe 
was banished by the lady, but she soon regretted 
her decision, for scenes with Butler were frequent. 
It is probable that he ill-treated and threatened 
her, for she wrote to Taaffe and implored him to 
save her from the bully. He arranged to meet 
her, and it was settled between them that she was 
to disguise herself and go to Berwick, where the 
young Irishman was to join her. She fully ex- 
pected to be pursued by Henry, but he made no 

B 



18 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

attempt to detain her, and her elaborate disguise 
and the melodramatic dash on board the fishing- 
smack at Berwick, which carried them to Whitby 
in Yorkshire, were all quite unnecessary. 

The Hon. Henry Butler had, as a matter of fact, 
grown tired of the widow, and he was already on 
his travels again with the object of finding a girl 
with a fortune and making her his wife. That 
Butler still retained his power to fascinate was 
shown when he arrived at Harrogate, then, as 
now, a fashionable resort. 

As the son of a peer he attracted attention, 
and his personality did the rest, but he would 
never have become known to Anne Harrison, 
daughter of a Yorkshire landowner, if a Kilkenny 
clergyman had not happened to be in the town 
at the same time. 

He was a friend of the Harrisons, and he pre- 
sented his noble friend to them, and Butler 
promptly laid siege to the heart and hand of the 
heiress. Again he had an easy victory, for Anne 
fell in love with him and joyfully accepted him 
when he proposed. 

Her parents approved of the match, for if the 
Irishman had no money it was more than likely 
that he would succeed to the viscounty, and 
Anne was socially ambitious. In the circum- 
stances her lover's suggestion of an early marriage 
was approved of, and less than a month after 
parting from Mrs. Colebrook, the Hon. Henry 
Butler was married to Anne Harrison at Harrogate. 

He made no attempt at concealment, and the 



THE FICKLE LOVER 19 

news was printed in the papers, and that was a 
strong point in favour of his son by Anne when 
he defended the action brought by his cousin. 
With his marriage Henry Butler ceased to be 
notorious. He seems to have become reformed 
and to have settled down with his wife and child- 
ren, but he never visited Ireland again, and his 
relations were not invited to his English home. 

Meanwhile, Amanda Colebrook was enduring 
a variety of experiences which had disastrous 
results for her. When she and John Taaffe 
arrived in England the young Irishman wrote to 
his father requesting permission to marry her, 
but the elder Taaffe replied with a threat to cut 
John off with a shilling unless he parted from the 
Scottish siren. 

But this John would not do. Mrs. Colebrook 
lived in daily terror of being claimed by Butler, 
and she implored Taaffe not to desert her. He 
was unwilling to lose the large estate to which he 
was heir, and yet he did not wish to act ungen- 
erously by the woman, and for a time they 
travelled about together until they arrived at 
Preston. 

It was here that John Taaffe decided to risk 
the consequences and marry her, and at his request 
a local Roman Catholic priest celebrated the 
ceremony, which was really illegal, because, as 
the law stood, no marriage could take place 
between a Protestant and a Roman Catholic, 
to which religion the Irishman belonged. 

However, he regarded the ceremony as binding, 



20 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

and for a few months they lived happily together. 
Then Mrs. Colebrook began to exhibit signs of 
insanity, and he took her to Edinburgh to consult 
a specialist there. Fortunately the doctor was 
able to assure him that the malady was only tem- 
porary, and that his wife would be all right soon, 
but something occurred in Edinburgh which 
terminated Taaffe's relations with her. 

Having plenty of time on his hands, John 
Taaffe spent some of it examining his wife's 
writing-desk in her drawing-room, and one night 
he found a letter from Henry Butler which plainly 
stated the details of the alleged marriage outside 
her bedroom door some months previously. The 
shock to Taaffe's feelings was profound, and with- 
out a word to Mrs. Colebrook he walked out of the 
house and never saw her again. 

Shortly afterwards he exiled himself to Italy, 
where he died in 1862, but the reason for his 
conduct had to be made known to his father, 
who promptly disinherited him and left the 
family estate to John's younger brother. 

For four years Mrs. Colebrook lived by herself, 
and she did not trouble either Butler or Taaffe. 
Her means were unequal to the demands she 
made on them, however, and she was soon in 
difficulties. 

When her finances were at their worst, news 
of her misconduct with the two Irishmen came to 
the knowledge of the Lord President of the Court, 
and he held an enquiry, with the result that he 
deprived the widow of the guardianship of her 



THE FICKLE LOVER 21 

two children, thus taking from under her control 
a thousand pounds a year. 

Her creditors thereupon seized the rest of her 
property, and the widow was left with scarcely 
sufficient to provide the necessaries of life. In 
her despair and distress she brought a suit in the 
Scottish courts, asking that John Taaffe might 
be ordered to support her on the ground that she 
was his wife. 

In support of her claim she induced Sarah 
Stride, her devoted maid, to swear an affidavit to 
the effect that she had witnessed a marriage 
between Amanda Colebrook and John Taaffe 
on a date previous to the scene on the landing 
with the Hon. Henry Butler. 

The case duly came on trial — John's father 
having accepted service on behalf of his son, 
and entering an appearance for him — and the 
decision of their lordships was that Mrs. Cole- 
brook was not the wife of Taaffe. Defeated in 
one direction, she now turned in another, and 
employed a shady solicitor to try and extract 
some money from Butler. 

She intimated her willingness to accept one 
thousand four hundred pounds in settlement of 
all her claims on Lord Mountgarret's son, but he 
refused to admit liability, and the contest between 
them ended after an exchange of letters, and the 
rest was silence until many years later the whole 
subject was revived in an Irish court. 

It might be supposed that, with such clear and 
unmistakable evidence at the disposal of those 



22 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

who maintained that the son of the Hon. Henry 
Butler by Anne Harrison was not legitimate, there 
would be scarcely any defence, but Mr. Butt, Q.C., 
who represented the defending viscount, delivered 
a particularly brilliant and striking speech on his 
behalf. 

He said that even if Mrs. Colebrook and 
Butler had been married on the landing of 
the house in Northumberland Street, Edinburgh, 
as described, the ceremony was not legal and 
binding and that the lady had never intended 
it should be. 

The widow had been a party to it only because 
she was terrified of the Irishman, and the Scottish 
law on the subject of marriage laid it down as an 
axiom that both parties must consent of their 
own free will and must not be coerced into sub- 
scribing to a declaration of willingness to marry 
and acceptance of marriage. 

Mr. Butt was not troubled by Sarah Stride's 
admission that she had committed perjury when 
she had sworn an affidavit describing an earlier 
marriage between her mistress and John Taaffe. 
At the trial of the case, Sarah, the only survivor 
of the midnight ceremony in the Northumberland 
Street house, stated that she had made the affi- 
davit at the suggestion of Mrs. Colebrook, and 
that it was a tissue of falsehoods. 

He declared that for more than forty years 
Henry Edmund had been regarded as his father's 
legitimate son, and he demanded a verdict from 
the jury in his favour. The jury, however, 



THE FICKLE LOVER 23 

found against Lord Mountgarret, therefore brand- 
estates to Pierce Somerset, his cousin. 

But the defendant promptly appealed, and 
the second jury returned a verdict for him, find- 
ing that there had been no legal marriage between 
his father and Mrs. Amanda Colebrook. 

From this decision there was another appeal, 
but the result of the second trial was confirmed 
by the court, and Anne Harrison's son kept his 
viscount's coronet and the estates. At his death 
in 1900 he was succeeded by his son, who died in 
1912. 



CHAPTER II 

THE MORDAUNT CASE 

When Sir Charles Mordaunt, Bart., M.P., of 
Walton Hall, Warwickshire, married Harriet, 
daughter of Sir Thomas Moncrieffe, Bart., at 
the Episcopal Church, Perth, on December 6, 1866, 
two of the most ancient families in Great Britain 
were united. The bridegroom could trace his 
descent from one of William the Conqueror's 
companions in arms, and the bride's lineage was 
equally historic. She was a very pretty girl in 
her twentieth year, and her social standing was 
such that she numbered amongst her friends 
the Prince and Princess of Wales (afterwards 
King Edward and Queen Alexandra) and other 
near relations of Queen Victoria. 

For nearly two years Sir Charles and Lady 
Mordaunt lived happily together. They had hosts 
of friends, possessed ample means and were popular 
in political and social circles. The baronet became 
acquainted with the Prince of Wales and was 
invited to functions attended by his royal highness, 
who was then the leader of a fashionable coterie 
of young men who were " seeing life " where life 
was most alluringly seen. 

The prince soon got into the habit of dropping 

24 



THE MORDAUNT CASE 25 

in at the Mordaunts' house in Chesham Place 
where he would never allow himself to be treated 
with any ceremony. The young wife, an acknow- 
ledged beauty, was accustomed to the homage 
of men, and it was her popularity with the male 
sex that was responsible for the first tiff with 
Sir Charles. He took himself seriously, for he 
had political ambitions and he could not forget 
that his family had been ultra-respectable for 
eight hundred years, and he was annoyed that 
his wife should monopolise the attentions of their 
exalted friends, who made no secret of the fact 
that it was on her account that they cultivated 
his acquaintance. 

" I don't approve of your friendship with the 
prince," he said on one occasion when Lady 
Mordaunt was reading a letter from his royal 
highness. 

For answer she tossed it across the table to 
him, and the baronet had the satisfaction of read- 
ing a dozen lines which might have been published 
in every paper in the kingdom, for in it the prince 
merely enquired after her health, mentioned a 
number of guests he was entertaining for the 
shooting in Scotland, and wound up by expressing 
a wish to see her and Sir Charles on his return to 
town. 

This was his first display of jealousy, but it 
was not the last, and from time to time he objected 
to half a dozen men of their acquaintance. One 
was a famous racing baronet, another an heir to 
an earldom, two were earls, and the remaining 



26 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

two were elderly noblemen whom she had known 
ever since she had been able to talk. Lady 
Mordaunt, however, never took her husband 
seriously, and his outbursts did not last long. He 
was genuinely devoted to her and proud of her 
popularity, and in 1868 when he decided to go 
for a yachting cruise to Norway he was sincerely 
grieved because she preferred to remain at home. 
It was, as events proved, a most unfortunate 
decision, for when Lady Mordaunt needed her 
husband's care and attention most he was away 
from her side and she was too young to take entire 
charge of her own life. She was expecting an heir 
and, restless and depressed, she wandered from 
one place to another, behaving oddly everywhere 
and arousing the suspicions of her servants and 
friends as to her sanity. 

However, she survived the separation without 
creating any public scandal, and she and Sir 
Charles were living together at the house in Ches- 
ham Place when on Sunday, February 28, 1869, 
she gave birth to a daughter. If he was dis- 
appointed because the child was not a boy the 
baronet did not show it, and he was tenderness 
itself to her. His kindness appeared to affect 
her profoundly, and the child was only a few days 
old when Lady Mordaunt clutched her husband 
by the hand as he was turning away from her 
bedside. 

" Charlie," she whispered hoarsely, " I have 
deceived you — the child is not yours. It is Lord 
Cole's." 



THE MORDAUNT CASE 27 

For a moment he was startled, but a glance at 
the pallid cheeks and the eyes that seemed to be 
on fire convinced him that she was talking at 
random. 

" There, there, dear," he said in a soothing 
voice, " you must not upset yourself. You'll be 
all right soon." 

In repeating this conversation in court Sir 
Charles swore that at the time of the first con- 
fession he paid no attention to it whatever. It 
had struck him as being too wildfy improbable 
to be credited, and he would have banished it 
from his memory had not Lad}' Mordaunt 
persisted in repeating it. 

She did not content herself with admitting 
misconduct with the viscount, but she declared 
in the most positive terms that there were other 
men with whom she had been guilty ; in fact, 
she seemed determined to brand herself as the 
vilest of women. And she was only twenty-tV o. 

Now, the very wholesale nature of the second 
and subsequent confessions carried with them 
their own refutation, yet the matter was too 
serious for the baronet to ignore. He was placed 
in a very delicate position, for amongst the men 
named by her was the Prince of Wales. But it 
is only fair to mention here that there was not a 
word of truth in the accusation against the prince 
— who was the victim of the delusions of a mad 
woman — and reviewing the notorious Mordaunt 
affair after nearly fifty years one can only marvel 
that Sir Charles did suceed after several trials 



28 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

in obtaining a divorce against one of the men 
implicated by his wife. But when the girl- wife 
persisted in proclaiming her guilt, her husband 
felt that he must in justice to himself obtain 
his freedom, and, accordingly, he started divorce 
proceedings at the earliest opportunity. 

The sensation that resulted cannot be described. 
It pulverised society and hypnotised the public. 
The plaintiff in his petition named " Lord Cole, 
Sir Frederick Johnstone, and others " as co- 
respondents, and everybody understood that 
" others " included the Prince of Wales. 

Poor Queen Victoria — whose rigid moral code 
did not permit her to receive even the injured party 
to a divorce suit — was horrified when she was in- 
formed that her eldest son had written love- 
letters to Harriet Mordaunt and that they would 
be read in open court. 

The old lady, with that readiness to believe 
the worst which distinguishes the plaster-saint 
school of respectability, was certain that the 
divine right of kings was about to receive its 
death-blow, and she dwelt in stricter seclusion 
than ever. For several months the prince suf- 
fered unjustly, but his final triumph was all the 
more complete because of the delay. 

Before the Divorce Court was troubled, how- 
ever, a great deal happened. Sir Thomas Mon- 
crieffe, shocked and amazed by his daughter's 
astounding confession, rushed to her assistance, 
and, when she did not deny her guilt, he came to 
the conclusion that she was insane. He brought 



THE MORDAUNT CASE 29 

several famous doctors to examine her, and they 
all agreed that she was not responsible for her 
actions. One of these, the celebrated Sir James 
Simpson, of Edinburgh, declared positively that 
she was out of her mind. 

Armed with these testimonies Sir Thomas 
appealed to a judge to rule that Lady Mordaunt 
could not be sued because she was of unsound 
mind, and his lordship stayed the proceedings 
which Sir Charles had started, appointed Mon- 
crieffe guardian of his daughter pending litigation, 
and ordered the question of her sanity to be 
investigated by a special jury. 

Counsel for the Warwickshire baronet main- 
tained that her ladyship was feigning madness 
to save herself from public disgrace, but the judge 
decided in favour of Sir Thomas, and thus the 
second trial was not to settle her guilt or inno- 
cence, but to determine whether she was sane or 
insane. 

The interest in the trial was phenomenal, and 
for weeks previous to February 16th, 1870, when 
it began, there was the keenest competition to 
secure a seat in court. 

There were, naturally, many representatives of 
Mayfair present when the case commenced before 
Lord Penzance and a special jury, for it had been 
persistently rumoured for weeks that it was going 
to be the most sensational trial of the century. 
Busybodies, who claimed to be in the confidence 
of members of the royal family had imparted as 
" a great secret " to their dearest friends the 



30 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

information that the Prince of Wales had been 
subpoenaed and that he was to be sharply cross- 
examined by Mr. Sergeant Ballatine, who had 
been briefed with Dr. Spinks, Q.C., and Mr. 
Inderwick, on behalf of Sir Charles Mordaunt. 

Mr. Deane, Q.C., led for Sir Thomas Moncrieffe, 
Lady Mordaunt's legal guardian — and Sir John 
Karslake and Mr. Jeune — the latter a future 
president of the Divorce Court — watched the 
proceedings on behalf of Sir Frederick Johnstone, 
one of the co-respondents who had never ceased 
to protest that he was innocent. 

On behalf of the unfortunate wife Mr. Deane 
opened the proceedings, and in the course of his 
speech he referred to the eccentricities in her 
conduct the year preceding the birth of her child. 
It was an amazing catalogue of acts clearly due 
to a chaotic brain. 

One of the least objectionable was a penchant 
for putting her head out of her carriage window 
and screaming for minutes without a pause. 
Occasionally she had exhibited that dislike for 
wearing clothes which stamps the lunatic, and 
her behaviour indoors would have disgraced a 
beast of the field. And yet when in her right 
senses Harriet Mordaunt was one of the most 
refined of women. 

Sir James Simpson gave an account of his 
interview with her ladyship and was emphatic 
that she was insane, but as Ballantine had been 
instructed to fight the case to the bitter end he 
did his utmost to create another impression in 



THE MORDAUNT CASE 31 

the minds of the jury. Sir Charles, who had been 
advised by eminent counsel that if his wife was 
adjudged a lunatic he would not be able to divorce 
her, was very anxious to secure a verdict certifying 
her to be sane, and, accordingly, Ballantine 
exerted himself and made as fine a speech as 
anyone could have done in the circumstances. 

The learned sergeant had, of course, doctors on 
his side, too, and he put them in the box and 
discussed with them in the form of question and 
answer various subjects connected with the case. 
These gentlemen were of opinion her ladyship 
was not mad, but neither in number nor reputa- 
tion did they rival the array of experts called by 
Mr. Deane, Q.C., a fact evident to Ballantine 
himself. 

Great was the surprise of the public when 
Ballantine suddenly threw up the sponge. 

" In view of the evidence we have heard," he 
said calmly, " we cannot any longer deny that 
Lady Mordaunt is insane." 

The sensation was terrific. Mr. Deane jumped 
to his feet to protest. He had not half finished 
yet, he cried, and there were one or two important 
matters he wished to speak on. Then counsel for 
Sir Frederick Johnstone wanted to ventilate 
his client's grievance, but he was suppressed. 

Lord Penzance, the essence of austerity and 
decorum, poured oil on the troubled waters. He 
intimated that he wished the case to proceed, 
and his decision puzzled those who were not aware 
that Ballantine's capitulation had upset an arrange- 



32 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

ment which had been come to behind the scenes 
to enable the Prince of Wales to prove his inno- 
cence now instead of years hence. He had not 
been subpoenaed by either side because his evi- 
dence could not affect the issue before the jury, 
but, as it seemed likely that the divorce suit 
would never be tried at all, this was regarded as 
the only opportunity his royal highness would have 
of disproving publicly the accusation against him. 

With the appearance of the heir to the throne 
the case reached its highest pinnacle of interest ; 
the excitement was almost unbearable when Lord 
Penzance formally notified the prince that he 
could ignore any question the answer to which 
might in his opinion tend to inculpate him as a 
possible defendant to divorce proceedings. 

The examination of the Prince of Wales may be 
given in full because of its historic interest. Princes 
had been co-respondents before his royal highness 
entered the witness-box, but never previously 
had the heir to a throne been placed in a position 
which compelled him to deny on oath that he had 
been guilty of adultery. His personal intervention 
in the case had been discussed by his relatives 
and by some of the leading statesmen and counsel 
of the day. Their advice as to his attitude towards 
the divorce suit may be summed up in two words, 
" dignified silence," but the prince, then in his 
twenty-ninth year, insisted on the fullest publicity. 
When he was sworn he was calm and self-possessed, 
and he spoke throughout in a steady, even voice 
that bore the impress of truth. 



THE MORDAUNT CASE 33 

When Dr. Deane rose to examine him the 
prince bowed, and the official report proceeds 
as follows : — 

Dr. Deane : "I believe your royal highness 
has been for some years acquainted with the 
Moncrieffe family ? " 

" I have." 

" Were you acquainted with Lady Mordaunt 
before her marriage ? " 

" I was." 

" On Lady Mordaunt 's marriage did you write 
to her, and make her some wedding presents ? ' 

" I did." 

" Previous to Lady Mordaunt 's marriage has 
she visited at Marlborough House when Her 
Royal Highness the Princess of Wales was 
there ? " 

" She has." 

" We are told that Lady Mordaunt was married 
at the end of 1866 ; in the year 1868 did you see 
much of her ? " 

" I did." 

" And in the year 1868 ? " 

" I did occasionally." 

" Were you acquainted with Sir Charles 
Mordaunt ? " 

" I was." 

" Have you frequently met Sir Charles Mor- 
daunt ? " 

" I have." 

" With Lady Mordaunt ? " 

" With Lady Mordaunt." 

c 



34 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

" Your royal highness knows a place called 
Hurlingham ? " 

" I do." 

" Have you been in the habit of meeting Sir 
Charles Mordaunt there ? " 

" Yes." 

" On one occasion, in 1868, was there a pigeon- 
shooting match between the two counties of 
Norfolk and Warwick ? " 

" There was." 

" Your royal highness and Sir Charles Mor- 
daunt were the respective captains of the two 
counties, I believe ? " 

" Yes ; I think it was in June." 

" Was Lady Mordaunt there ? " 

" She was." 

" Did Lady Mordaunt score for you ? ' 

" She scored for both sides." 

" In the course of that pigeon-shooting match 
did you speak to Lady Mordaunt at a time when 
Sir Charles Mordaunt was by ? " 

" I believe so." 

" In the course of this case we have heard that 
your royal highness uses hansom cabs occasion- 
ally. I do not know that it is material, but is it 
so? " 

" It is so." 

" I will only ask you one more question. Has 
there ever been any improper familiarity or 
criminal act between yourself and Lady Mor- 
daunt ? " 

" There has not." 



THE MORDAUNT CASE 35 

Some applause greeted this statement, and 
then Sergeant Ballantine rose. 

" I have no question to ask your royal highness," 
he said, quietly, and the prince departed amid 
another demonstration of applause. 

It has often been stated that the letters of the 
Prince of Wales to Lady Mordaunt were not read 
in court, but this is incorrect. The public had got 
the impression that the letters were of a scan- 
dalous nature, and, when on the fourth day of the 
trial they were " put in " but not read, certain 
members of the royal family became very anxious 
that they should be published, knowing that if 
they were suppressed malicious gossip would be 
busy with his royal highness's character for years 
to come. Accordingly arrangements were made 
which enabled a provincial daily to print them. 
It was an act which in other circumstances would 
have led to proceedings for contempt of court, 
but Lord Penzance was content to describe it as 
grossly improper and only to hint at punishment, 
for his lordship must have been aware that pub- 
lication had been inspired in a quarter which 
forbade further investigation. However, towards 
the close of the fifth day's hearing the letters were 
read and it is not too much to say that they helped 
more than anything else to exonerate the prince. 

" Sandringham, King's Lynn, 

" January 13th, 1867. 
" My Dear Lady Mordaunt, 

" I am quite shocked never to have answered 
your kind letter, written some time ago, and for the 



36 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

very pretty muffetees, which are very useful this cold 
weather. I had no idea where you had been staying 
since your marriage, but Francis Knollys told me that 
you are in Warwickshire. I suppose you will be up 
in London for the opening of Parliament, when I hope 
I may perhaps have the pleasure of seeing you and of 
making the acquaintance of Sir Charles. I was in 
London for only two nights, and returned here Saturday. 
The rails were so slippery that we thought we should 
never arrive here. There has been a heavy fall of snow 
here, and we are able to use our sledges, which is capital 
fun. 

" Believe me, yours ever sincerely, 

" Albert Edward." 



" Monday. 
" My Dear Lady Mordaunt, 

" I am sure you will be glad to hear that the 
Princess was safely delivered of a little girl this morning 
and that both are doing very well. I hope you will come 
to the Oswald and St. James's Hall this week. There 
would, I am sure, be no harm your remaining till Satur- 
day in town. I shall like to see you again. 

" Ever yours most sincerely, 

" Albert Edward." 

" Marlborough House, 

" May 7th, 1867. 
" My Dear Lady Mordaunt, 

" Many thanks for your letter, and I am very 
sorry that I should have given you so much trouble 
looking for the lady's umbrella for me at Paris. I am 
very glad to hear that you enjoyed your stay there. I 
shall be going there on Friday next, and as the Princess 
is so much better, shall hope to remain a week there. 
If there is any commission I can do for you there it 
will give me the greatest pleasure to carry it out. I 
regret very much not to have been able to call upon you 



THE MORDAUNT CASE 37 

since your return, but hope to do so when I come back 
from Paris, and have an opportunity of making the 
acquaintance of your husband. 

" Believe me, yours very sincerely, 

" Albert Edward." 

" Marlborough House, 

" October 13th. 
" My Dear Lady Mordaunt, 

" Many thanks for your kind letter, which I 
received just before we left Dunrobin, and I have been 
so busy here that I have been unable to answer it before. 
I am glad to hear that you are flourishing at Walton, 
and hope your husband has had good sport with the 
partridges. We had a charming stay at Dunrobin — 
from the 19th of September to the 7th of this month. 
Our party consisted of the Sandwiches, Grosvenors 
(only for a few days), Sumners, Bakers, F. Marshall, 
Albert, Ronald Gower, Sir H. Pelty, Oliver, who did 
not look so bad in a kilt as you heard ; Lascelles, Falkner, 
and Sam Buckley, who looked first-rate in his kilt. I 
was also three or four days in the Reay Forest with the 
Grosvenors. I shot four stags. My total was twenty- 
one. P. John thanks you very much for your photo ; 
and I received two very good ones, accompanied by a 
charming epistle, from your sister. We are all delighted 
with Hamilton's marriage, and I think you are rather 
hard on the young lady, as, although not exactly pretty, 
she is very nice looking, has charming manners, and is 
very popular with every one. From his letter he seems 
to be very much in love — a rare occurrence now-a-days. 
I will see what I can do in getting a presentation for 
the son of Mrs. Bradshaw for the Royal Asylum of 
London, St. Ann's Society. Francis will tell you result. 
London is very empty, but I have plenty to do, so time 
does not go slowly, and I go down shooting to Windsor 
and Richmond occasionally. On the 26th I shall shoot 
with General Hall at Newmarket, the following week 
at Knowlsley, and then at Windsor and Sandringham 
before we go abroad. This will be probably on the 



38 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

18th or 19th of next month. You told me when I last 
saw you that you were probably going to Paris in Novem- 
ber, but I suppose you have given it up. I saw in the 
papers that you were in London on Saturday. I wish 
you had let me know, as I would have made a point of 
calling. There are some good plays going on, and we 
are going the rounds of them. My brother is here, 
but at the end of the month he starts for Plymouth on 
his long cruise for nearly two years. Now I shall say 
good-bye, and hoping that probably we may have a 
chance of seeing you before we leave, 

" I remain, yours most sincerely, 

" Albert Edward." 

" White's, 

" November 1st. 
" My Dear Lady Mordaunt, 

" Many thanks for your letter, which I received 
this morning. I cannot tell you at this moment the 
exact height of the ponies in question, but I think they 
are just under fourteen hands, but as soon as 1 know 
for certain I shall not fail to let you know. I would be 
only too happy if they would suit you, and have the 
pleasure of seeing them in your hands. It is quite an 
age since I have seen or heard anything of you, but I 
trust you had a pleasant trip abroad, and I suppose 
you have been in Scotland since. Lord Dudley has 
kindly asked me to shoot with him at Buckenham on 
the 9th of next month, and I hope I may, perhaps, have 
the pleasure of seeing you there. 

" Believe me, yours ever sincerely, 

" Albert Edward." 

" Sandringham, King's Lynn, 

November 30th. 
" My Dear Lady Mordaunt, 

" I was very glad to hear from Colonel Kings- 
cote the other day that you had bought my two ponies. 
I also trust that they will suit you, and that you will 
drive them for many a year. I have never driven them 



THE MORDAUNT CASE 39 

myself, so I don't know whether they are easy to drive 
or not. I hope you have had some hunting, although 
the ground is so hard that in some parts of the country 
it is quite stopped. We had our first shooting party 
last week, and got 809 head one day, and twenty-nine 
woodcocks. Next week the great Oliver is coming. 
He and Blandford had thought of going to Algiers, 
but they have now given it up, and I don't know to 
what foreign clime they are going to betake themselves. 
I saw Lady Dudley at Onwallis, and I thought her look- 
ing very well. I am sorry to hear that you won't be at 
Buckenham when I go there, as it is such an age since 
I have seen you. If there is anything else (besides 
horses) that I can do for you, please let me know, and 
" I remain, yours ever sincerely, 

" Albert Edward." 

" Sandringham, King's Lynn, 

" December 5th. 
" My Dear Lady Mordaunt, 

" Many thanks for your letter, which I received 
this evening, and am very glad to hear that you like 
the ponies, but I hope they will be well driven before 
you attempt to drive them, as I know they are fresh. 
They belonged originally to the Princess Mary, who 
drove them for some years, and when she married, not 
wanting them just then, I bought them from her. I 
am not surprised that you have had no hunting lately, 
as the frost has made the ground as hard as iron. We 
hope, however, to be able to hunt to-morrow, as a thaw 
has set in. We killed over a thousand head on Tuesday, 
and killed forty woodcocks to-day. Oliver has been in 
great force and as bumptious as ever. Blandford is 
also here, so you can imagine what a row goes on. 
On Monday next I go to Buckenham, and I am indeed 
very sorry that we shall not meet there. I am very 
sorry to hear that you have been seedy, but hope that 
you are now all right again. 

" Ever yours very sincerely, 

" Albert Edward." 



40 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

" Thursday. 
" My Dear Lady Mordaunt, 

" I am sorry to find by the letter that I re- 
ceived from you this morning that you are unwell, and 
that I shall not be able to pay you a visit to-day, to 
which I had been looking forward with so much pleasure. 
To-morrow and Saturday I shall be hunting in Notting- 
hamshire, but if you are still in town, may I come to 
see you about five on Sunday afternoon ? And hoping 
you will soon be yourself again, 

" Believe me, yours ever sincerely, 

" Albert Edward." 

" Sunday. 
" My Dear Lady Mordaunt, 

" I cannot tell you how distressed I am to 
hear from your letter that you have got the measles, 
and that I shall in consequence not have the pleasure 
of seeing you. I have had the measles myself a long 
time ago, and I know what a tiresome complaint it is. 
I trust you will take great care of yourself, and have a 
good doctor with you. Above all, I should not read 
at all, as it is very bad for the eyes, and I suppose you 
will be forced to lay up for a time. The weather is very 
favourable for your illness ; and wishing you a very 
speedy recovery, 

" Believe me, yours most sinerely, 

" Albert Edward." 

" Sunday. 
" My Dear Lady Mordaunt, 

" Many thanks for your kind letter. I am 
so glad to hear that you have made so good a recovery, 
and to be able soon to go to Hastings, which is sure to 
do you a great deal of good. I hope that perhaps on 
your return to London I may have the pleasure of seeing 

y0U " 

" Believe me, yours very sincerely, 

"Albert Edward." 



THE MORDAUNT CASE 41 

" Sandringham, King's Lynn, 

" November 16th. 
" My Dear Lady Mordaunt, 

" I must apologise for not having answered 
your last kind letter, but accept my best thanks for it 
now. Since the 10th I have been here at Sir William 
Knollys' house, as I am building a totally new one. I 
am here en garcon, and we have had very good shooting 
The Duke of Cambridge, Lord Suffield, Lord Alfred 
Paget, Lord de Grey, Sir Frederick Johnstone, Chaplin, 
General Hall, Captain (Sam) Buckley, Major Grey, and 
myself composed the party ; and the great Francis 
arrived on Saturday, but he is by no means a disting- 
uished shot. Sir Frederick Johnstone tells me he is 
going to stay with you to-morrow for the Warwick races, 
so he can give you the best account of us. This after- 
noon, after shooting, I return to London, and to-morrow 
night the Princess, our three eldest children, and myself, 
start for Paris, where we shall remain a week, and then 
go straight to Copenhagen, where we spend Christmas, 
and the beginning of January we start on a longer trip. 
We shall go to Venice, and then by sea to Alexandria, 
and up the Nile as far as we can get ; and later to Con- 
stantinople, Athens, and home by Italy, and I don't 
expect we shall be back again before April. I fear, 
therefore, I shall not see you for a long time, but trust 
to find you, perhaps, in London on our return. If you 
should have time, it will be very kind to write me some- 
times. Letters to Marlborough House, to be forwarded, 
will always reach me. I hope you will remain strong 
and well, and wishing you a very pleasant winter. 

" I remain, yours most sincerely, 

" Albert Edward." 

Those who are apt to dwell fondly on the social 
glories of the sixties might test their memories by 
annotating these letters. They give us an intimate 
glimpse into the life of a man who graduated in 



42 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

the world rather than in courts and who before 
his death attained an influence world-wide and 
stupendous and unaffected by the reluctance of the 
democracy to credit with brains a king. 

Queen Victoria must have felt better when she 
read them in her morning paper, for along with 
the prince's denial of his guilt they were sufficient 
to convince every reasonable person that he had 
been the victim of an insane woman's ravings 
and the malice of the gossips. 

The judge in his summing-up confined himself 
strictly to the legal issue, and did not trouble to 
deal with the evidence relating to misconduct. 
He went over the statements made by the various 
experts and the nurses and others who had lived 
with Lady Mordaunt, and he concluded an im- 
partial survey with a strict injunction to the jury 
to be careful and not to arrive at a hasty decision. 

It was well meant, but the jury must have even 
before Ballantine's surrender decided the matter, 
and they were only five minutes out of court. 
Their verdict was that Lady Mordaunt was insane 
and had been insane for some time. 

The signal victory scored by Sir Thomas Mon- 
crieffe was not accepted as final and conclusive 
by Sir Charles Mordaunt, who immediately ap- 
pealed, and the third trial came on the following 
April, when the three judges, Chief Baron Kelly, 
Lord Penzance, and Mr. Justice Keatinge, 
reserved their decision until June 2nd. 

Then it was announced that their lordships 
differed, Kelly forming the minority, as he alone 



THE MORDAUNT CASE 43 

was in favour of the appellant. This was a second 
blow for the baronet, and he changed his tactics. 
He now admitted his wife's insanity, but he 
entered an action claiming that her mental state 
did not protect her from being sued for divorce 
or disqualify him from obtaining it. 

Four years after his failure to prove Lady 
Mordaunt's sanity his claim to divorce facilities 
was heard by a court consisting of five judges. 
The law was very uncertain on the point, and the 
case was regarded as a very important one, and if 
the public interest had lessened it was only because 
all they heard now had been rendered familiar 
by litigation extending over five years. 

Hitherto Sir Charles Mordaunt had experienced 
only defeat, but now his perseverance was to be 
rewarded, although it was only the narrowest of 
majorities that decided in his favour, for three of 
the judges held that insanity is no bar to divorce ; 
two that it is, and thus the baronet was at last 
successful. The victory had been obtained at the 
expenditure of many thousands of pounds, but 
he was wealthy and could afford the outlay. 

A fresh petition for divorce was presented, and 
this time only one co-respondent was named — 
Lord Cole. No suspicion now attached to the 
Prince of Wales, Sir Frederick Johnstone, or 
any of the other men who had been mentioned in 
connection with the proceedings, and in March 
1875, the case was tried. Dr. Spinks, Q.C., and 
Mr. Inderwick appeared for the plaintiff, and Sir 
Henry James (later on Lord James of Hereford) 



44 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

represented Lord Cole. Any expectation of a 
fight was dissipated when it was realised that 
Lady Mordaunt had not retained counsel, and the 
proceedings were brief. Formal evidence was 
led, witnesses examined, and speeches made, and a 
verdict given for Sir Charles. Six months later 
the decree nisi was made absolute, and the unhappy 
woman passed out of his life. 

The litigation was the most protracted and 
expensive in the history of the divorce court. 
From April 29th, 1869, when the Judge-Ordinary 
pronounced Lady Mordaunt insane, to March 
nth, 1875, the case had been kept before the 
public by means of five trials, and if Sir Charles 
had not been a rich man he would never have been 
able to rid himself of a wife whom three tribunals 
had pronounced to be mad. 

The baronet married again, and had an heir, 
and until his death in 1897 he lived in an obscurity 
which must have been very welcome to him after 
the publicity he had endured by reason of his 
matrimonial troubles. 



CHAPTER III 

THE COLIN-CAMPBELL DIVORCE SUIT 

It is remarkable that a marriage which in less 
than a couple of years ended in complete and 
tragic failure should have owed its origin to a 
romance which seemed to guarantee its success, 
for it contained all the ingredients which go to 
form the love story dear to the heart of the senti- 
mentalist. 

There was, to begin with, the unexpected 
meeting, resulting in love at first sight ; the 
secret proposal, followed by disclosure and parental 
opposition ; the efforts to separate the lovers 
because the man's father wished him to marry a 
girl with money, and finally, the marriage in 
defiance of family disapproval. 

And the opening scene of the comedy, which 
developed into a tragedy, was played at Inveraray, 
in Argyllshire, where many of the best-known 
persons in society had assembled for the shooting. 
Amongst them was Lord Colin Campbell, son of 
the Duke of Argyll, the famous statesman, and 
when he set out from his father's shooting-box 
at Inveraray on that morning in September, 
1880, he had yet to learn of the existence of the 
young lady who was to have such an influence 
on his life. 

45 



46 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

He had recently left Cambridge, and, as yet, 
he had to decide on a career for himself, but he 
knew that his father wished him to make an ad- 
vantageous match, for the duke had to maintain a 
position of semi-state, and, as he had a large 
and expensive family, there was no superfluity 
of ready-money. Lord Colin, however, was in 
no hurry to take a wife, and he certainly was not 
thinking of matrimony when a friend asked him if 
he would care to be presented to Miss Gertrude 
Blood, whose people occupied a shooting-box 
near the duke's. 

" I'll be delighted," he said, with conventional 
politeness, but the moment he saw the young lady 
he succumbed to her rare beauty and personal 
charm ; her voice intoxicated him, and he treasured 
every word she uttered, and for the rest of the 
day he was tortured by a fear that he might 
never get the chance to woo her. He reminded 
himself that he was just a bare acquaintance, and 
in all probability they would not meet again. 

Then it was obvious that such a lovely girl 
must already have plenty of admirers, and, no 
doubt, amongst them was a special favourite. 
All these things haunted him and made him miser- 
able, until taking his courage in both hands he 
sought her out, and proposed exactly two days 
after his introduction to her. 

Miss Blood, completely surprised, could only 
refer him to her parents, who, not unnaturally, 
were delighted with their daughter's conquest. 
The Duke of Agryll was then one of the greatest 



THE COLIN-CAMPBELL DIVORCE 47 

men in the empire, and he dominated society 
and politics both in Scotland and England. Lord 
Colin might be a younger son, but he could give 
Gertrude rank and position, and as she had brains 
and beauty, they were well matched. 

So the Bloods gave their consent, and wished 
the young couple all happiness, but the duke 
withheld his and opposed the engagement with 
all the weight of his influence. He did not con- 
sider Miss Blood good enough for his son, and he 
never recognised her family, and he consistently 
ignored their existence. 

A year later, however, the marriage took place, 
and Lord and Lady Colin Campbell started house- 
keeping in London, but two years afterwards her 
ladyship obtained a judicial separation, and from 
that time onwards society was seldom unprovided 
with a fresh pretext for discussing their matri- 
monial affairs. Eventually in the November of 
1885 matters were brought to a head by husband 
and wife cross-petitioning for divorce. 

This was no ordinary case, quite apart from 
the social standing of the parties to it. The con- 
centrated venom and bitterness displayed by each 
side was proof of that. Envy, hatred, and all 
uncharitableness characterised the principals and 
their partisans, and society was divided into two 
camps as a consequence. 

A curious incident marked the issuing of the 
writs. One afternoon the late Sir George Lewis, 
Lady Colin's solicitor, heard by accident that 
Lord Colin had instructed his lawyer to sue his 



48 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

wife for divorce. Immediately the wily Lewis 
drew up the necessary papers, and handing them 
to a confidential clerk, bundled him into a cab 
with orders to file them at the Law Courts and 
obtain a summons against Lord Colin claiming 
divorce. 

The object of this piece of strategy was to 
create the impression that it was her ladyship 
who had first thought of having her marriage 
dissolved, and also to enable her counsel to have 
the first and last word in court. As Lewis always 
retained Sir Charles Russell for his big cases the 
manoeuvre was of vast consequence to his client, 
and it undoubtedly saved her from disaster in 
the long run. 

The surprise of Lord Colin's lawyer when the 
next morning he learned at the Divorce Court 
that he had been forestalled, bordered on stupe- 
faction, but, of course, he was helpless, and he 
could only rely on counsel to overcome the dis- 
advantage and to try and create sympathy for 
his lordship by exposing the trick. 

Lady Colin Campbell's charge against her hus- 
band was that he had committed adultery with 
Amelia Watson, one of his servants. On the 
other hand Lord Colin accused her of misconduct 
with the Duke of Marlborough, Sir Eyre Shaw — 
the famous chief of the London Fire Brigade — 
General Sir William Butler, and Mr. Thomas 
Bird, a well-known surgeon. Counsel engaged 
were equally eminent. 

The leaders — all Q.C.'s — were Sir Charles 



COLIN-CAMPBELL DIVORCE SUIT 49 

Russell, Mr. Inderwick, Mr. Finlay, Sir Richard 
Webster, Sir Edward Clarke, Mr. Gully, and 
Mr. Murphy. Two of these attained the position 
of Lord Chief Justice ; another rose to be Lord 
High Chancellor, and Gully was Speaker of the 
House of Commons for several years before he 
was created Viscount Selby. The only survivors 
of all those named, principals and counsel, are 
the Rt. Hon. Sir Edward Clarke, K.C., and 
Viscount Finlay. 

Russell's opening speech on behalf of Lady 
Colin was a masterpiece of mingled fact, suggestion, 
invective, and cunning. He related how Miss 
Blood had become acquainted with Lord Colin 
and how the young man had fallen in love with 
her. Sir Charles declared that her parents were 
not altogether enamoured of the suggested match ; 
that they wanted something better for their 
brilliant daughter, and that they were not the 
schemers which the other side alleged. 

According to counsel Miss Blood did not accept 
Lord Colin at once. His health was not good 
and he had been ordered to take a sea-voyage, 
and while he was abroad it was to be understood 
that the girl was not pledged to him. 

However, Lord Colin was so very much in love 
that he returned to England at the earliest oppor- 
tunity, sought the young lady out and again 
asked her to marry him, and the marriage duly 
took place. 

It was not long, however, before her ladyship 
decided that she had made a mistake. To begin 

D 



50 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

with, she believed that her husband's bad health 
was affecting her, and then she was such a bril- 
liant success in London society that it was seldom 
she could be with him, and, of course, he grumbled. 
She went everywhere, even to houses where Lord 
Colin was unknown, but she explained that it was 
generally in a professional capacity — she had a 
splendid singing voice — and that her object was 
to earn money. Besides singing, she contributed 
regularly to the weekly and monthly reviews, 
and thus in one way and another Lady Colin 
achieved a position for herself quite distinct from 
that of being a duke's daughter-in-law. 

The trouble over the health question was in- 
tensified by Lord Colin 's suspicions that his wife 
was too familiar with certain of her friends. He 
did not care for the Bohemian ways she affected, 
and thus with one thing and another the way was 
paved to the judicial separation. 

Sir Charles said that his client would have left 
it at that, but when she received positive informa- 
tion about Lord Colin 's relations with Amelia 
Watson she had no alternative but to bring her 
action for divorce. 

The chief witness for the plaintiff was Lady 
Miles, of Leigh Court, Bristol, who had been a 
friend of both parties, but had lately identified 
herself exclusively with Lady Colin. 

She was a very clever woman of great animation, 
and when she had described the acts of familiarity 
she alleged she had seen between Lord Colin 
and Amelia Watson, she withstood a shrewd and 



COLIN-CAMPBELL DIVORCE SUIT 51 

persistent cross-examination by Mr. Finlay (now, 
of course, Viscount and ex-Lord Chancellor). 
She would not admit for a moment that she could 
be mistaken, and again and again she scored with 
a witty remark, counsel accepting everything 
complacently, to the surprise of those who were 
unaware that he had a surprise in store for the 
opposition which would smash their case to 
smithereens. 

Once or twice he succeeded in making Lady 
Miles contradict herself, but on the whole the 
witness was not a failure, and when she left the 
box the crowded court must have believed that 
Sir Charles Russell had established his case. He 
had relied exclusively on her ladyship to prove 
Lord Colin's act of adultery and her positive 
statements could not be gainsaid by mere 
contradiction. 

That great Scotsman, Viscount Finlay, took 
part in innumerable sensational trials when he 
was at the Bar, but it is doubtful if he ever handled 
a difficult and delicate task with the skill that 
made his conduct of Lord Colin's action so memor- 
able, although it is only lair to record that, all 
things considered, Sir Charles Russell's triumph 
was the outstanding feature of this most remark- 
able of divorce suits. 

Finlay, however, was seen at his best. He and 
Frank Lockwood had opposing them the very 
cream of the English Bar, and yet when he rose 
to make his opening speech it took him less than 
an hour to demolish the superstructure of sus- 



52 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

picion and innuendo raised against his client. 
The rest of his time he devoted to an attempt to 
prove Lady Colin's misconduct with the duke, 
the general, the fire brigade chief, and the specialist. 

The crowded court was just in the humour for a 
sensation when Finlay began his address. Lady 
Miles's evidence of what had taken place between 
Lord Colin and Amelia Watson had been so matter 
of fact that everybody wondered how counsel 
would tackle it. He did not leave them long in 
doubt. 

" Whatever opinion you may have formed 
with regard to the story of Amelia Watson," he 
said, " we must all recollect that it is seldom that 
a case is brought into court founded on such miser- 
ably weak evidence as there is in this case — the 
unsupported evidence of Lad}' Miles. The charge 
is absolutely and wholly untrue. It will be sworn 
to be false by Amelia Watson herself, and by Lord 
Colin. 

" Feeling certain that this was an infamous 
conspiracy concocted by two women, Lady Miles 
and Lady Colin, to injure Lord Colin, we took 
the unusual course of asking Amelia Watson to 
submit to a medical examination. She consented, 
and she was examined this morning by two medical 
men of eminence, and they will tell you that 
Amelia Watson, without the possibility of a doubt, 
is a virgin." 

The sensation this statement created was pro- 
found, and when the two specialists confirmed it 
on oath it was realised that the bottom had been 



COLIN-CAMPBELL DIVORCE SUIT 53 

knocked out of Lady Colin's case, that the offen- 
sive had passed to the other side, and that the 
trial now resolved itself into a battle for her 
reputation. 

Having disposed of the accusation against his 
client, Mr. Finlay proceeded to give his version of 
Lady Colin's relations with the Duke of Marl- 
borough and the other co-respondents, and the 
many millions who did not mix in society had 
revealed to them the daily doings of that small 
minority which is called Society. 

At that time the duke was in very bad odour 
owing to his notorious escapade with a certain 
countess with whom he had eloped to Paris, and 
Lord Colin was justified in disapproving of his 
wife receiving the nobleman at her house. The 
fact that they were on very familiar terms, al- 
though Lord Colin and the duke were not friends, 
had aggravated his suspicions, and now his counsel 
stated that he would prove that Lady Colin had 
gone for the week-end with his grace to Purfleet. 

There were many surprises and sensations in 
this most amazing of divorce dramas, and not 
the least were certain incidents arising out of the 
connection of the Duke of Marlborough with it. 
Mr. Finlay put in the box the head waiter at the 
hotel at Purfleet, where he alleged that the duke 
and Lady Colin had stayed, and he also called 
two young men — both sons of earls — who swore 
that they had seen the lady and her ducal friend 
get into the train at Purfleet on the Monday. 

Now that was evidence that was undoubtedly 



54 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

very strong, and yet it was subsequently shown 
beyond cavil that Lady Colin had never been to 
Purfleet or anywhere else with the duke. 

His grace had sworn in an affidavit that he 
had been to Purfleet for the week-end referred 
to, but he had added that he had been quite alone 
on that occasion. When, however, he stood in 
the witness-box, he admitted that he had sworn 
falsely, for he now said that he had been accom- 
panied by a lady, a Mrs. Perry, who was not 
unknown in Pimlico. 

There is no doubt that this contributed as 
much as anything else to the result of the case. 
It was a damaging blow to Lord Colin, because 
it gave one the impression that, just as the case 
against him had been created out of prejudice 
and malice, so he had allowed his hatred for 
Lady Colin to influence him to bring an equally 
false charge against her. 

The Duke of Marlborough cut a very poor 
figure in the box, for Mr. Finlay in cross-examina- 
tion brought out all the details of his elopement 
with the wife of his bosom friend, the earl, but 
that could not incriminate Lady Colin, and if his 
grace did himself no good he was of inestimable 
service to the girl-wife of whose many talents 
he was a great admirer. 

The charges of misconduct in which the names 
of Sir William Butler, the then Captain Shaw, and 
Mr. Bird, the surgeon, were included, were not so 
easily disposed of except in regard to the latter. 
The evidence against Mr. Bird was ridiculously 



COLIN-CAMPBELL DIVORCE SUIT 55 

weak, and Sir Charles Russell declared that he 
would never have been thought of in connection 
with the matrimonial shipwreck of the Campbells 
if he had not offended his lordship by suing him 
for his fees. Sir Edward Clarke, most chivalrous of 
advocates, experienced little difficulty in clearing 
his client's good name. 

But with the captain and the general it 
was different, mainly because Sir William Butler 
avoided service of a subpoena, and, therefore, 
could not be cited as a witness. Dismissed 
servants, discontented acquaintances, suspicious 
relatives and purveyors of tittle-tattle and pur- 
chasers of their " wares " followed one another 
into the witness-box, and did all they could to 
blacken the character of the young wife. 

Mr. Finlay and Mr. Lockwood pressed home 
every advantage, while the opposition, repre- 
sented by Sir Charles Russell and other famous 
barristers counter-attacked and exercised all those 
ingenious arts of which they were masters to 
discredit the testimony of the array of witnesses 
which Lord Colin had marshalled against the 
girl he had once loved passionately. 

We were told of meetings at unusual hours 
between Lady Colin and the captain or the 
general. It was alleged that they had easily 
persuaded her ladyship to sacrifice her virtue 
and that their friendship was merely an excuse 
for indulging in vice. Many were the contra- 
dictions elicited by cross-examination, and counsel 
feigned horror, indignation, amusement, and sar- 



56 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

casm in quick succession, and " scenes " were 
innumerable. 

But it all only amounted to this — that there was 
some ground for suspicion, and that it rested 
with the jury to say whether a lady of rank could 
be very familiar with men to whom her husband 
objected without forgetting her marriage vows. 

Sir Charles Russell contended that it was all 
Lord Colin's fault for worrying Lady Colin until 
she became his wife ; Mr. Finlay maintained that 
his client's youth and inexperience had been taken 
advantage of in order that Gertrude Blood might 
become " My Lady," and Mrs. Blood the mother- 
in-law of a lord who had for sister-in-law the 
Queen's dauglue" ! There was no talk of love 
now, and the romantic scenes which had taken 
place at Inveraray were forgotten, or only sneered 
at if referred to at all. 

What amazed everybody was the animus 
bordering on ferocity which each of the parties 
to the marriage had exhibited towards each other 
since the proceedings for the judicial separation. 
Lord Colin had had his wife watched by detectives, 
and once hearing that she had suddenly gone 
abroad he had become obsessed by the notion that 
she was travelling with the Duke of Marlborough. 

Now the French law permitted an aggrieved 
husband to have his erring wife arrested if she 
could be found in the company of her paramour, 
and his lordship determined to take advantage of 
it and teach Lady Colin a lesson. He, therefore, 
proceeded to Paris with his solicitor, and applied 



COLIN-CAMPBELL DIVORCE SUIT 57 

for a warrant for her arrest, and had the warrant 
been executed Lady Colin would have been flung 
into a filthy prison and herded with the scum ot 
humanity. 

The Paris police ascertained, however, that 
Lord Colin was mistaken, and nothing happened, 
but the incident was typical of his attitude to- 
wards her. As for Lady Colin, she was equally 
bitter, her pride having been outraged by the 
contemptuous rejection of her advances by her 
father-in-law, the Duke of Argyll. 

It cannot be said that the latter behaved with 
any generosity towards his daughter-in-law, al- 
though it has to be remembered that he never 
approved of his son's marriage and had early 
prophesied that it would- end in "disaster. 

The duke, who could be very amiable to those 
mortals who were willing to admit his superiority 
to them, adopted a harsh manner towards Lady 
Colin, and his brief appearance in the witness- 
box was arranged so that he might publicly pro- 
claim his sympathy for his son. 

Sir Charles Russell, in his concluding speech, 
discredited the notion that his client and her 
family had been crazy to bring about her marriage. 
He derided Lord Colin 's pretensions to be a some- 
body, and pointed out that he was merely a 
younger son with very little money. 

" True, he was a Campbell of Argyllshire," said 
Russell, in one of his few humorous interludes, 
" and my learned friend, Mr. Finlay, who is a 
Scotsman, appears to think with another Camp- 



58 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

bell, who exclaimed on the marriage of one of the 
family with a southerner, ' Eh, mon, the Queen 
must be a proud leddy this day ! ' " Sir Charles 
was, of course, referring to the marriage of the 
Duke of Argyll's son, the Marquis of Lome, with 
H.R.H. Princess Louise. 

Mr. Justice Butt summed up at great length, 
and at a quarter to seven the jury retired, and, 
during their absence of an hour and three-quar- 
ters, the packed court was almost too excited 
to chatter. All the counsel remained to hear 
the verdict with the exception of Russell, and the 
Campbells kept their places, whilst Lady Colin — 
to whom the decision meant everything — and also 
her relatives, did not depart. 

When the jury filed in at last it was only to 
announce that they could not agree, but in the 
course of a colloquy with his lordship they revealed 
the fact that they had come to a decision about 
Lord Colin. Everybody took this to mean that 
they had rejected the charge against him and that 
they were divided only on the question of Lady 
Colin 's guilt. 

They were persuaded to attempt to attain 
unanimity again, and a second time they returned 
to report failure, but at last, at thirteen minutes 
past ten they reappeared and in the absence of the 
judge the registrar put the following questions 
each of which was followed with breathless interest 
by the audience. 

" Do you find that Lord Colin Campbell com- 
mitted adultery with Amelia Watson ? " 



COLIN-CAMPBELL DIVORCE SUIT 59 

The Foreman : "No." 

" Did Lady Colin Campbell commit adultery 
with the Duke of Marlborough ? " 

The Foreman : " No." 

" Did Lady Colin Campbell commit adultery 
with Captain Shaw ? " 

The Foreman : " No." 

" Did Lady Colin Campbell commit adultery 
with General Butler ? " 

The Foreman : " No." 

" Did Lady Colin Campbell commit adultery 
with Mr. Thomas Bird ? 

The Foreman : " No." 

In an instant Lady Colin was surrounded by her 
friends, and her exit from the court was in the 
nature of a triumphal procession. Her honour 
had been saved, and she was content. But the 
result was that after an expenditure of many 
thousands of pounds, and the washing of much 
dirty linen in public, she and her husband were 
left in the same position. And husband and wife 
they remained in name only until death removed 
them. 



CHAPTER IV 

PAUPER OR PEER ? 

When on the 22nd of March, 1869, the fourth 
Earl of Wicklow died, it was generally understood 
that his nephew, Charles Francis, was his suc- 
cessor in the title and estates. The father of 
Charles, the Hon. and Rev. Francis Howard, had 
married twice. By his first wife he had had three 
sons — all of whom were dead by 1869 — and by the 
second he had two more sons, the elder of whom — 
Charles Francis — claimed the earldom, as none 
of his step-brothers had left any children. 

To everybody's surprise, however, the widow 
of the clergyman's eldest son suddenly produced 
a boy of five who, she declared, was her own and 
her husband's, and, therefore, fifth Earl of Wick- 
low. As the child had never been heard of before 
by his alleged father's relatives, Charles disputed 
his claim, and eventually the matter was referred 
to the supreme tribunal of the land, the House 
of Lords, and a very sensational trial was the 
result. 

The infant claimant, who bore the same name 
as his reputed father, William George Howard, 
eldest son of the Hon. and Rev. Francis Howard, 

60 



PAUPER OR PEER? 61 

was, of course, merely a nominal figure in the 
contest, which lay between the woman who called 
herself his mother on the one side and a host of 
the Howards on the other. 

Having brains, resource, and courage, allied 
to a determination to achieve whatever she set 
her heart on, she boldly championed the child 
whom she wished to make an earl, and who, accord- 
ing to her enemies, was not only not a Howard 
but a pauper who had been born in the infirmary 
of the Liverpool workhouse to an unmarried 
domestic servant. 

The House of Lords, therefore, had to decide 
whether the boy was a peer or a pauper. A little 
more than seven years before the great case came 
on for trial, William George Howard, nephew and 
heir of the Earl of Wicklow, found himself hiding 
from his creditors in mean lodgings in a squalid 
London street. A course of dissipation had 
alienated him from his family, and the wildest 
extravagances had reduced him to the level of 
accepting charity from impecunious lodginghouse- 
keepers. 

It was about this time that he became ac- 
quainted with Ellen Richardson. She had enough 
brains for half a dozen Howards, and sufficient 
beauty to win the admiration of the sot. He 
married her without troubling to invite his rela- 
tives to the wedding, conscious that, as she was 
the daughter of a coachman, they would disapprove 
of his choice. 

It is certain, however, that Ellen gained nothing 



62 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

by the marriage, for his premature death deprived 
her of the consolation prize of a peeress's coronet, 
and during the few years they lived together 
she was harassed by his creditors and disgusted 
by his habits. 

According to her counsel, Sir John Coleridge 
(afterwards Lord Chief Justice of England) her 
husband was in Ireland when she gave birth to 
the boy at 27, Burton Street, Eaton Square, 
and in support of her statement she produced 
three witnesses — her landlady, Mrs. Bloor ; the 
latter's sister, Rosa Day ; and her own sister, 
Jane. 

All gave very emphatic and circumstantial 
accounts of the sudden arrival of the infant, and 
they were not shaken in cross-examination. Yet 
the whole affair was shrouded in mystery, because 
there were several queer incidents in connection 
with it which Mrs. Howard could not explain 
away. 

First of all, no doctor had attended her, for 
instead of sending for her regular medical man, 
whose house was quite near, she asked that a 
Dr. Wilkins, elderly and feeble, who lived a long 
way off, might be called in when her confinement 
was due. When Mr. Bloor did go in search of 
the doctor, and failed to bring him to the house in 
Burton Street, he was met at the door by Mrs. 
Bloor, who joyfully exclaimed that the baby had 
come, and that all was well, their lodger having 
had a marvellous delivery. 

A few days later Dr. Wilkins — so it was said by 



PAUPER OR PEER? 63 

Mrs. Howard's witnesses — put in an appearance 
and prescribed for the infant, who was suffering 
from some trilling ailment, but, as the doctor was 
in his grave by the time the claim was examined 
by the House of Lord this could not be con- 
firmed. 

For the claimant, William George, it was stated 
that for three months after the birth Mrs. Howard 
and her baby lived at 27, Burton Street, and 
that almost daily the witnesses, whose names 
have been cited already, saw the child and com- 
mented on its remarkable resemblance to its 
father. But it was admitted that no one else was 
allowed to enter the room where the child was, 
and that his existence had been kept a profound 
secret from the Howard family. 

Not the slightest hint was given even to the Earl 
of Wicklow, although the nobleman was rapidly 
failing, and it might have been supposed that 
he would have been interested in the news that 
he had a great-nephew to succeed him. Charles 
Francis, the young man who was looked upon as 
the next earl, had not been told either, and a huge 
surprise seems to have been very carefully pre- 
pared for the Howards when the earl passed 
away. 

That was, in brief, the story related by the 
Solicitor-General, Sir John Coleridge, when he 
asked their lordships to declare that William 
George Howard, aged five, was fifth Earl of 
Wicklow. 

The House would have granted his request — 



64 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

as the Lord Chancellor later on said in the course 
of his judgment — had there not been an accum- 
mulation of apparently trivial incidents which 
combined to cast doubts on the evidence of the 
widow and her three lady friends, although Sir 
Roundell Palmer, who subsequently became Lord 
Chancellor and Earl of Selvourne, did not succeed 
in making them contradict themselves. 

The legal advisers of Charles Francis Arnold 
had left no stone unturned in their efforts to 
secure disproof of Mrs. Howard's statements, 
and when his case was opened by Sir Roundell, 
that famous counsel began by declaring that the 
witnesses for the infant claimant had perjured 
themselves, and that he would prove that Mrs. 
Howard had never had a child at all. 

It is remarkable how often a mere fluke will 
upset a gigantic conspiracy, or chance defeat an 
elaborate plot. Mrs. Howard and her friends had, 
apparently, taken everything into consideration 
when they had planned to secure an earldom 
for little William Howard. 

The widow had selected witnesses of good 
character, and the manner in which they withstood 
Sir Roundell Palmer indicated that they had well 
rehearsed their evidence. Yet it was the widow 
who let them down. 

Her story was that she had given birth to the 
child on May 16th, 1864, and considerable detail 
was adduced to account for the unexpected 
arrival of the infant, but Sir Roundell was able 
to hand to their lordships a letter written by Mrs. 



PAUPER OR PEER? 65 

Howard four days previous to the alleged birth, 
in which she applied for the situation of governess 
to a family in Devonshire. 

In the letter she described herself as single, 
and, as counsel pointed out, no woman expecting 
a child any time within the next two or three weeks 
would seek employment under her maiden name, 
and boldly call herself unmarried-. It was in- 
credible, because her condition would be obvious. 

That fatal letter had been the result of an 
impulse born of despondency. Mrs. Howard, 
early in May, 1864, had seen her husband in Dublin, 
and had heard from him that his financial position 
was hopeless, and that there was no chance of his 
raising any money. He had bluntly disclosed 
the brutal truth, which was that she must provide 
for herself in future. 

Returning to London, the distracted woman 
had one morning at breakfast picked up the 
" Times," and, catching sight of an advertisement 
for a governess, had there and then applied for 
it. It is fairly certain that she had no intention 
of taking the post had her letter been favourabty 
considered. 

It is astonishing, however, that her application 
should have been preserved for nearly seven years, 
and that the next time she saw it the Lord Chan- 
cellor should be holding it in his hand. 

The letter was supported by the evidence of a 
dressmaker who had measured Mrs. Howard for 
a costume that same important month of May. 
She now testified that there had been nothing 

E 



66 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

about the lady's figure to indicate that she was 
expecting a child, and, indeed, it was obvious 
enough that no woman would waste money by 
being fitted for a dress when in that condition. 

Furthermore, a domestic servant in the employ- 
ment of the Bloors said that although she had 
been in the house at the time of the alleged birth, 
she had never heard of the child's existence. Then 
a Dr. Baker spoke of having professionally attended 
Mrs. Howard not long after her alleged confine- 
ment, and he proved that she could never have 
been enceinte. A medical colleague gave similar 
evidence. 

At this point the trial was postponed, everybody 
present having had sufficient sensations for that 
particular day, but the greatest surprises were 
still in store. 

When the court assembled again, Mrs. Howard's 
counsel placed in the witness-box two persons, 
who swore that at the time Dr. Baker and his 
friend had stated they had examined the widow, 
she had been in Longley, in Staffordshire, and 
that they must have mistaken another lady for 
her. 

This appeared to be a score in her favour, 
but the case for Mrs. Howard was demolished 
when on March, 1870, Sir Roundell Palmer 
informed their lordships that he was in a position 
to prove the identity of " William George Howard." 
To the amazement of both their lordships and the 
audience, he declared he was the son of a Mary 
Best, a Liverpool domestic servant, who had been 



PAUPER OR PEER? 67 

forced to seek the shelter of the workhouse in- 
firmary in the northern seaport to give birth to 
her child. Sir Roundell said that he had the girl 
herself there to support his statement, and that 
her evidence would be endorsed by the head-nurse 
and two of the assistant nurses at the infirmary 
when Mary Best had been an inmate. 

Before the nurses were called, Sir John Coleridge 
asked their lordships to adjourn to enable him 
to prepare evidence to rebut this unexpected 
move by his opponents. " We wish to examine 
Mrs. Howard now," said the Lord Chancellor, 
and Sir John obediently sent for her, but it was 
discovered that she had left the House of Lords 
secretly and that she had not returned to her 
lodgings. 

For the time being she had vanished, and their 
lordships had to adjourn for a week. During the 
interval public excitement was intense, and it 
was rumoured that the widow, frightened by the 
Liverpool story, had gone abroad ; but when the 
court reassembled, she was in her usual place, 
and on hearing her name she stepped forward. 

" I decline to speak until the Liverpool wit- 
nesses have been heard," she said, in a determined 
voice, when an official attempted to administer 
the oath. " You will do as we order you," said 
the Lord Chancellor severely. " Swear the witness 
at once." But Mrs. Howard was not to be cajoled 
or frightened. 

Sir John Coleridge endeavoured to coax her 
mto obeying their lordships' command, and failed. 



68 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

She held her ground, and even a threat of im- 
prisonment failed to move her. Finally, the 
Lord Chancellor had to commit her to prison 
for contempt of court, and when she had been led 
away the three Liverpool nurses were examined, 
and they bore out Sir Roundell's statement. 

Amid intense excitement the three nurses were 
examined, and their united evidence was to the 
effect that in the early part of 1864 two ladies 
had called at the infirmary with the object of 
adopting a baby. One of them — since identified 
by the nurses as Mrs. Howard — made a careful 
examination of all the children in the lying-in 
ward before deciding to adopt Mary Best's child. 

The friendless little servant was not anxious 
to part with her baby, but she had been pressed 
to do so by the kindly head-nurse, who had pointed 
out to her the difference it would make to the 
child's career if he were taken in charge by a rich 
and influential lady. 

She told Mary that she had nothing to offer 
the baby except penury and humiliation, and that 
she would be doing the baby a serious injury if 
she rejected the lady's generous offer. Thus the 
young mother was talked over, and the pauper 
infant was taken away by the veiled woman, and 
Mary was left to sob her heart out because she 
missed her child. 

The nurses were positive that Mrs. Howard 
was the woman who had adopted the infant, and 
Mary Best herself swore to the same effect. Sir 
John Coleridge was forensicalfy indignant about 



PAUPER OR PEER? 69 

all this. In his opinion it was a trumped-up affair, 
and he said that, given a little time, he would 
expose the conspiracy. 

He did not dispute the nurses' statement that 
Mary Best had had a child, or that the child had 
been adopted, but he was certain that the veiled 
lady had not been Mrs. Howard. The day's 
proceedings ended when a telegram arrived for 
counsel. 

It was from Boulogne, and it announced that the 
lady who had taken away the servant's child from 
the Liverpool infirmary had been found, and 
that she had consented to cross to England and 
reveal herself in order that Mrs. Howard's case 
might not be prejudiced. 

Another adjournment, was, therefore, made, 
and the legal advisers of the widow had several 
days in which to bring their important Boulogne 
witness to London. When the House of Lords 
met again, however, the Solicitor-General had to 
confess that the Boulogne lady had failed him 
and that he must do without her assistance. 

He was not, however, despondent, and he looked 
pleased with himself and very confident when he 
rose to cross-examine Mary Best, the girl who 
was said to be the mother of the boy for whom an 
earldom was claimed. 

Mary and the nurses had stated that the 
former's infant had been carried off by Mrs. 
Howard, leaving the servant-girl childless, but 
when Sir John Coleridge asked Mary if she had 
left the infirmary with a baby, and she answered 



7o SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

that she had, it seemed as if Sir Roundell Palmer's 
eleventh-hour revelation was going to avail him 
nothing, although the girl swore that it was not 
her own baby she had conveyed from the in- 
firmary. 

" I wanted to have a baby to nurse, and I 
took another girl's," she said, in a voice that 
trembled. " But you supported that child out 
of your scanty earnings," said the Solicitor- 
General, in an incredulous tone, " and when it 
died you paid the expenses. Did you do all that 
for a stranger's child ? " 

" Yes, sir," she replied promptly. " I missed 
my own baby so much that I had to have one 
to prevent me feeling lonely." 

Sir John's contention was that the girl was 
lying, and that she had been persuaded by the 
other side to join in a conspiracy to prevent Mrs. 
Howard's son obtaining his rights, but Mary's 
explanation was confirmed when it was estab- 
lished beyond a doubt that her own child had been 
fair, with blue eyes, while the one she had adopted 
had been of a different complexion altogether. 

Further, to complicate the position, the nurses 
who had identified Mrs. Howard declined to 
corroborate Mary Best's remarkable story, adding 
that it would have been impossible for her to 
have become possessed of another patient's baby 
without their knowledge. 

After lengthy speeches on both sides, the Lord 
Chancellor announced the decision of the court 
in a judgment which imputed perjury to several 



PAUPER OR PEER? 71 

of the witnesses for Mrs. Howard. His Lordship 
mentioned that he and his colleagues had come 
to a decision without taking the Liverpool evidence 
into consideration, as it had not been in all respects 
satisfactory, and they had been puzzled;! by | the 
numerous contradictions. 

But there was sufficient data in the previous 
testimony, he said, to enable them to declare 
that William George Howard had not made out 
his claim, and that the Earldom of Wicklow, 
accordingly, belonged to Charles Francis, who 
was declared the holder of the title. 

It was expected that prosecutions for perjury 
would follow upon the very deliberate pronounce- 
ment of the Lord Chancellor, but nothing was done, 
because it was the opinion of the Crown that the 
person responsible for the attempt to obtain a 
peerage for Mary Best's child, a Mr. Baudenave, 
was not within reach of the court. 

Baudenave had, in fact, disappeared before the 
trial, obviously to avoid being called, but his 
name was mentioned many times, and he was 
regarded as the evil genius of the woman who had 
so imprudently put forward the claim. 

Nothing more was heard of the child, and shortly 
after the failure of her plans, Mrs. Howard married 
again. 

To the end of her life the woman who had claimed 
a peerage for the infant she had bought maintained 
a complete silence about her tussle with the 
House of Lords. 

That the child was an innocent impostor there 



72 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

can be no doubt, and the alacrity with which Mrs. 
Howard sank into obscurity was, doubtless, in- 
spired by a feeling of thankfulness that the authori- 
ties had not followed up the Lord Chancellor's 
decision by prosecuting her for perjury. 



CHAPTER V 

A FAMOUS AMERICAN ACTOR AND HIS ENGLISH 

WIFE 

On the night of March 2nd, 1846, when Macready 
was acting in " Hamlet " at the Theatre Royal, 
Edinburgh, he was, in the second scene of the 
third act, vigorously hissed by a gentleman in one 
of the boxes, who was afterwards identified as 
Edwin Forrest, the American tragedian. 

The incident caused a scene of considerable 
excitement, the English actor bowing " derisively 
and contemptuously " — to quote from his own 
description of the affair — and the American re- 
taliating by more conspicuous indications of 
hostility. The audience sided with their favourite, 
but, as Macready was wisely dissuaded from 
delivering a speech, the play finished quietly and 
there was no further demonstration. 

But there was to be more than one sequel to 
this declaration of war between two of the most 
popular actors of their generation. Edwin 
Forrest, whose third visit to Great Britain it was, 
had been exasperated by the comparative failure 
of his tour. He was proud and arrogant and 
prone to jealous outbursts, and in his disappoint- 
ment and rage he blamed Macready, who, he 

73 



74 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

averred, was the cause of all his troubles. The 
American believed that he was the greatest actor 
in the world, and he watched and waited for an 
opportunity to humiliate his rival in public. The 
chance came at Edinburgh where, affecting to 
disapprove of Macready 's " business " just before 
the " play " scene, he attempted to hiss him off the 
stage. 

It was rather ungrateful of Forrest when we 
recollect that on the occasion of his first and 
second visits Macready had proved himself one 
of his best friends. The Englishman had been a 
prominent figure at the banquet given by the 
Garrick Club in honour of the American and he 
had introduced him to persons of influence and 
importance and had, in fact, exerted himself to 
ensure the comfort and success of Forrest. 

However, the failure of the latter's third tour 
soured him and turned him against his former 
friend, and when in 1848, Macready went to 
America the admirers of Forrest brought about 
disturbances in New York, Philadelphia and in 
Boston, and a riot at the first-named city re- 
sulted in twenty-two people being killed and 
thirty injured. Macready thereupon abandoned 
his tour and returned home. 

The alleged rivalry between the actors was the 
subject of considerable correspondence in the 
American Press. Forrest did not distinguish him- 
self by his vituperative vignettes of Macready, 
to whom he referred in one of his " cards " to a 
New York paper as " a drivelling dodderer," and 



A FAMOUS AMERICAN ACTOR 75 

it was this undignified conduct of his which was 
said to be the cause of the first really serious 
disagreement with his wife. 

She had stood by him in his first contest with 
the Englishman and had loyally supported him 
when the presence of Macready in New York 
brought their respective personalities into the 
limelight of criticism, but she apparently dis- 
approved of her husband demeaning himself by 
writing ill-natured comments on his rivals, and, 
as the subject was fully investigated during the 
celebrated divorce suit of Forrest v. Forrest, the 
trial revealed much that was secret concerning 
the sensational quarrel which had begun in an 
Edinburgh theatre. 

When in England in 1837 Forrest, who was then 
thirty-one, married Catherine, daughter of John 
Sinclair, a tenor who was in the front rank of his 
profession and of whom an account may be found 
in the " Dictionary of National Biography." 

The lady was only nineteen, very beautiful 
and accomplished, and for about twelve years 
the marriage was a success. Then husband and 
wife suddenly separated, and Forrest subsequently 
attempted to obtain a divorce by a special Act 
of the Pennsylvania Legislature, was defeated, 
and eventually the action for divorce was brought 
by his wife in New York and, after a hearing that 
extended into the thirty-third day, the jury 
pronounced their verdict. 

It was a remarkable trial, for there was nothing- 
moderate in the charges and counter charges 



76 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

brought by the contestants. In Mr. Charles 
O'Conor Mrs. Forrest had a brilliant member 
of the American bar to fight for her. He had a 
very arduous time, for several of the witnesses 
were practically put on trial, their characters 
and life-stories being examined minutely and 
made the subject of protests and objections by 
opposing counsel which very often were speeches. 
This determination to discredit the other side 
was the chief reason for the proceedings lasting 
from December 16th, 185 1, to January 26th, 1852, 
and Chief Justice Oakley, who presided, had good 
cause for more than once expressing his weariness. 

But to the general public the case proved fas- 
cinating and the court was always packed, while 
even on the coldest days there was a crowd to 
watch the principals make their exits and en- 
trances, for many well-known men and women 
were dragged into the matrimonial dispute, and 
the eminence of the defendant and the social fame 
of his wife made it certain that there would be 
many " revelations " of stage and society life. 

It was Mrs. Forrest's belief that her husband 
had grown tired of her and that to rid himself of 
the responsibility of providing for her he had con- 
cocted charges of infidelity against her. He 
denied this and said that she had been unfaithful 
to him, and he protested that he had loved her 
until he had discovered a letter to her from a 
fellow-actor, George Jamieson, which had con- 
vinced him that she had committed adultery 
and was his enemy instead of his friend. 



A FAMOUS AMERICAN ACTOR yy 

As usual there were two versions as to how 
the domestic trouble began. The Macready- 
Forrest dispute was said to have started it, Mrs. 
Forrest earning her husband's dislike by advising 
him not to take any further part in it ; but this 
may have been an attempt by the defendant to 
prejudice the plaintiff by cunningly suggesting 
that she had declined to forget her English 
nationality and had because of it acted detri- 
mentally to the interests of her American husband 
simply because he was an American. But the 
jury, with a chivalry characteristic of their country, 
decided the case purely on its merits and insisted 
on keeping to the facts. 

Chief Justice Oakley truly said of it in his 
summing-up, "It is a most extraordinary case. 
There are two persons living together up to a 
certain period, in an apparent state of affection 
and harmony, which is suddenly interrupted 
by their charging each other with acts of in- 
fidelity. 

" If their mutual allegations against each other 
are to be taken as proved, it appears that both 
of these persons, anterior to the separation, lived 
in a most abandoned manner — Mr. Forrest fre- 
quents houses of a certain description, travelling 
about the country with a woman, apparently not 
even taking the pains to conceal their intercourse ; 
while Mrs. Forrest lived in a state of adulterous 
intercourse with several persons. And while all 
this was going on it appears they were writing 
each other letters in the most affectionate manner." 



78 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

One of the numerous letters read in court may 
be reproduced as it shows the intellectual calibre 
of the wife of the famous tragedian. It covers 
many subjects, from the apostle of Free Love 
to a criticism of a famous preacher : 

" Chicago, 
" My Dear Sir, " June nth. 

" It has been a question with me for some 
days whether I should reply to the letter I received 
from you in Pittsburg, or leave the matter you therein 
write about for future discussion ; but as a chance for 
that seems somewhat remote, I will for a few moments 
tax your well-known patience. 

" In referring to my letter from New Orleans, you 
speak as though I had written you a treatise on the rights 
of women, and the doctrines of Fourier ; if I err not 
greatly, I neither mentioned one nor other of these topics, 
for indeed I had half determined never to discuss them 
with you again. I remember telling you in my letter 
that I had greatly enjoyed the society I had met in 
New Orleans, especially that of some intellectual persons. 
When I inquired of you in my letter from Pittsburg 
what you thought of Fourier's system now, of course I 
could only refer to such portion of it as has been in- 
fluential in bringing about the great change in France, 
such as refers to the organization of labour, etc., etc., 
and which all those whose minds keep pace with the 
progress of the age, regard as the only means for amelior- 
ating the condition not only of the probatory but of the 
great mass of mankind suffering from the pressure of 
the past. Had any one else written as you do, I should 
be apt to suspect that he had received his ideas of 
Fourier from some such source as the ' New York 
Herald,' whose editor, lacking capacity to comprehend 
a system so vast and profound, as well as so ennobling 
to humanity, has selected only what he conceives to be 
the most vulnerable portion of the doctrines of associa- 
tion, and indulges in a wholesale denunciation of the 



A FAMOUS AMERICAN ACTOR 79 

immoralities which his prurient mind alone can discover. 
I do not for a moment think that the most enthusiastic 
follower of Fourier expects the people of the present age 
to throw off all the ties of society and social life, and 
attempt to carry out in all respects the views of this 
great man ; there are few, very few persons, who have 
thought out these matters sufficiently to be prepared 
for such a change, and it is the mission of those few to 
prepare the way for the coming generations of the earth. 
The disciples of Fourier do not desire the subversion of 
all social order ; this is one of the many slanders which 
attach to them as well as to all other reformers, and 
which it is not worth while to refute. All improve- 
ments social or political, must be accomplished by 
degrees. Our minds must be educated up to the appre- 
ciation of the doctrines of a man who we must admit 
was, like many of the greatest benefactors of the human 
race, in advance of his age, and by education only can 
we hope to bring his views successfully into practice ; 
for to attempt to bring the present generation at once 
into association, with all the bigotry, selfishness, and 
deeply rooted prejudices which many people hug so 
closely, would be as absurd as to take the poor Indian 
from his wilderness, and expect him to be happy in 
civilisation ; and yet you will not, I am sure, tell me 
that the life of the savage is the best. It is impossible, 
my dear friend, that the wonderful change which has 
taken place in men's minds, within the last ten years, 
can have escaped the notice of so acute an observer 
as you are, and if 3/ou have read the works which the 
great men of Europe have given us within that time, 
you have found they all tend to illustrate the great 
principle of progress, and to show at the same time, 
that for man to obtain the high position for which he 
is by nature fitted, woman must keep pace with him. 
' Man cannot be free, if woman be a slave,' so writes a 
mighty mind. You say, ' the rights of woman, whether 
as maid or wife, and all these notions I utterly abhor.' 
I do not quite understand what you here mean by the 
rights of woman. You cannot mean that she has none. 



8o SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

The poorest and most abject thing of earth has some 
rights ; but if you mean the right to outrage the laws 
of nature, by running out of her own sphere, and seeking 
to place herself in a position for which she is unfitted, 
then I perfectly agree with you, and think a woman 
has no more business in the halls of legislature than a 
man has in those portions of his house devoted to 
domestic affairs. At the same time, woman has as high 
a mission to perform in this world as man has ; and he 
never can hold his place in the ranks of progression 
and improvement who seeks to degrade woman to a 
mere domestic animal. Nature intended her for his 
companion, and him for hers, and without the respect 
which places her socially and intellectually on the same 
platform, his love for her personally is an insult. 

" Again you say : ' A man loves her as much for her 
very dependence on him as for her beauty or loveliness.' 
(Intellect snugly put out of the question). This remark 
from you astonished me so much that I submitted the 
question at once to Forrest, who instantly agreed with 
me, that for once our good friend was decidedly wrong. 
(Pardon the heresy ; I only say for once). What ! 
do you value the love of a woman who only clings to you 
because she cannot do without your support ? Why 
this is what in nursery days we used to call ' cupboard 
love,' and value accordingly. Depend upon it, as a 
general rule, there would be fewer family jars, if each 
were pecuniarily independent of the other. With 
regard to mutual confidence, I perfectly agree with 
you that it should exist ; but for this there must be 
mutual sympathy ; the relative position of man and 
wife must be that of companions — not mastery on one 
side and dependence on the other. Again you say, 
' A wife if she blame her husband for seeking after new 
fancies, should examine her own heart and see if she 
find not, in some measure, justification for him.' Truly, 
my dear friend, I think so too ; (when we do agree, our 
unanimity is wonderful !) and if, after that self-examina- 
tion, she finds the fault is hers, she should amend it ; 
but if she finds, on reflection, that her whole course 



A FAMOUS AMERICAN ACTOR 81 

has been one of devotion and affection for him, she 
must even let matters take their course ; and rest 
assured, if he be a man of appreciative mind, his affection 
for her will return. This is rather a degrading position ; 
but a true woman has pride in self-sacrifice. In any case, 
I do not think a woman should blame a man for indulging 
his fancies. I think we discussed this once before, and 
that I then said as I do now, that he is to blame when 
these fancies are degrading, or for an unworthy object ; 
the last words I mean not to apply morally, but in- 
tellectually. A sensible woman who loves her husband 
in the true spirit of love, without selfishness, desires 
to see him happy, and rejoices in his elevation. She 
would grieve that he should give the world cause to 
talk, or in any way risk the loss of that respect due 
to both himself and her ; but she would infinitely rather 
that he should indulge ' new fancies ' (I quote you) 
than lead an unhappy life of self-denial and unrest, 
feeling each day the weight of his chains become more 
irksome, making him, in fact a living lie. This is what 
society demands of us ; in our present state we cannot 
openly brave its laws, but it is a despotism which cannot 
exist for ever ; and, in the meantime, those whose minds 
soar above common prejudice, can, if such be united, 
do much to make their present state endurable. It is 
a fearful thing to think of the numbers who, after a 
brief acquaintance, during which they can form no 
estimate of each other's characters, swear solemnly to 
love each other while they ' on this earth do dwell.' 
Men and women boldly make this vow as though they 
could, by the magic of these few words enchain for ever 
every feeling and passion of their natures. It's absurd. 
No man can do so ; and society, as though it had made 
a compact with the devil to make a man commit more 
sins than his nature would otherwise prompt, says, 
' Now you are fairly in the trap, seek to get out, and we 
cast you off for ever — you and your helpless children.' 
Man never was made to endure even such a yoke as un- 
wise governments have sought to lay on him ; how 
much more galling, then, must be that which seeks to 



82 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

bind the noblest feelings and affections of his nature, 
and make him, 

' So, with one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe, 
The dreariest and the longest journey go.' 
That there is any necessity to ensure, by any means, a 
woman's happiness, is a proposition you do not seem 
to have entertained while writing your letter of May 
24th, but, perhaps, we are supposed to be happy under 
all circumstances. I shall scarcely dare to hope you 
will pardon me for taking up so much of your time as 
it will need to read this ; but you will please remember 
that I have bestowed an equal time in writing to you, 
and I will add that there is no other one of my friends 
on whom I would, at this time, expend so much. Pray 
let me have a line from you first, to say I am forgiven 
for the trespass, not that I would ask you to answer 
this, for I have no desire to write again on these subjects, 
but just to let one know how the world is jogging on 
with you. Your reply will reach me at Detroit, if it 
be there before the 4th of July, and afterwards at 
Buffalo. 

" Forrest commenced here on Thursday last, and 
has had very good houses. I suppose he will play till 
the 23rd. We received the ' Evening Post.' Grand 
merci, mon ami. Of course I hope you will receive this 
letter merely as a sort of discussion among friends who 
desire to know each other's opinions. I read it to 
Forrest and he agrees perfectly with all I have said. 
We shall be very glad to get home ; indeed, I may say 
I am as much tired as he is. Since we left New Orleans, 
I cannot say I have enjoyed anything except a few 
hours with Magoon, and hearing him preach. I hope 
you heard him in New York. I trust averages are 
' looking up,' and that you are once more in a cheerful 
mood. None wish you more success than your friend. 

"C. N. F." 



The actor, George Jamieson, has already been 
referred to, and it was an unsigned letter from 



A FAMOUS AMERICAN ACTOR 83 

him to Mrs. Forrest that was the foundation of 
Forrest's charges of misconduct against his wife. 
The lady swore that she had never encouraged 
him to be familiar with her and that she could 
not prevent him writing to her. Jamieson cer- 
tainly did her the worst of services when he 
rhapsodically apostrophised as " Consuelo," the 
fancy name being taken from the well-known 
novel by George Sand. 

This communication was found by the actor 
when he was looking for some letters which he 
had supposed were from her sister but of which 
he had become suspicious because he had observed 
that she was very nervous about them and con- 
stantly carried them on her person wherever 
she went. A fierce legal battle was waged over 
the admission of the " Consuelo " epistle, and 
it would not have been read in court had it not 
been incorporated in one of the numerous affi- 
davits, the reading of which contributed so much 
to the lengthening of the proceedings. It was 
a remarkable production, and it is not surprising 
that Forrest, although he was obviously ver}' 
anxious to find a reason for divorcing his wife, 
considered it highly suspicious. 

Until the discovery of the letter the differences 
in the Forrest household had been many but 
not very serious. Mrs. Forrest was fond of enter- 
taining and she loved society. She knew every- 
body worth knowing in New York, and dis- 
tinguished Englishmen visiting the United States 
generally contrived to secure an introduction to 



84 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

the daughter of John Sinclair, the famous 
tenor. 

Ever since her marriage she had been an in- 
defatigable hostess, but Forrest, as soon as he 
lost interest in her, detached himself from her 
parties, and in his solitude readily imagined that 
amongst the literary men, the stage folk, and 
the idlers of both sexes who belonged to his wife's 
set there was at least one man with whom she was 
in love. The thought may have been born of the 
wish, but with the capture of the " Consuelo " 
letter he believed that he had the means of success 
in his possession. 

" And now, my dearest Consuelo," Jamieson 
wrote to Mrs. Forrest, " our brief dream is over, 
and such a dream. Have we not known real 
bliss ? Have we not realised what poets love to 
set up as an ideal state, giving full license to their 
imagination, scarce believing in its reality ? Have 
we not experienced the truth that ecstasy is 
not a fiction ? And what an additional delight 
to think that I have made some hours happy to 
you. Yes, our little dream of great account is 
over ; reality stares us in the face. 

" Can reality take from us when she separates 
and exiles us from each other ? Can she divide 
our souls, our spirits ? Can slander's tongue or 
rumour's trumpet summon us to a parley with 
ourselves, where to doubt each other we should 
hold a counsel ? No ! No ! A doubt of thee can 
no more find a harbour in my brain than the ope n 
rose should cease to be the hum-bird's harbour 



A FAMOUS AMERICAN ACTOR 85 

As my heart and soul are in your possession, 
examine them and you will find no text from 
which to discourse doubt of me ... Be happy, 
dearest ; write to me and tell me you are happy. 
Think of the time when we shall meet again. 
Believe that I shall do my utmost to be worthy of 
your love ; and now, God bless you a thousand 
times, my own, my heart's altar." 

This is merely an extract from the letter which 
was the sensation of the divorce suit, but its 
recipient apparently took no serious notice of it. 
She was probably pleased to be the object of so 
much admiration, even if it was a trifle theatrical 
and incoherent, but George Jamieson was not one 
of her most intimate friends, and when Forrest 
first decided to impugn her honour he named 
nine men in all with whom, he alleged, she had 
committed misconduct. Amongst them were 
N. P. Willis and Richard Willis, and Captain 
Calcraft, an Englishman who in cross-examination 
refused to answer several questions because they 
might incriminate him. 

The others were friends of the plaintiff's and 
they had excited her husband's jealousy by 
attending parties at his house when he had been 
absent. At the trial the number was reduced 
to six, and with the wife charging her husband 
with adultery with an actress of the name of 
Josephine Winter and with having frequented 
houses of ill-fame for years the lawyers had plenty 
to do, and there was no chance of quarter being 
given by either side. 



86 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

The explanation offered by Jamieson that he 
was intoxicated when he wrote the " Consuelo " 
letter to Mrs. Forrest and the lady's denial that 
she had ever encouraged him to regard her as 
more than an ordinary friend formed the defence 
to the charge concerning the actor, and counsel 
for Forrest, aware that it was the weakest part 
of their case, concentrated their efforts on trying 
to prove that Mrs. Forrest had conducted an 
immoral intrigue with N. P. Willis and his brother, 
Richard, with the other suspects as aiders and 
abettors if not principals themselves. 

In the course of the action all sorts and con- 
ditions of witnesses were brought forward. We 
had the humorous variet}' (conscious and other- 
wise), the very serious, the nervous, the independ- 
ent and the assertive. Two women gave with a 
wealth of detail very damaging evidence against 
Mrs. Forrest, in whose service they had been. 
These were Christiana Underwood, an elderly 
Scotswoman who cut a poor figure in cross- 
examination ; and Anna Flowers, a girl whose 
character was torn to shreds when Mr. O'Conor 
had asked her " a few questions." 

They swore that when employed by Mrs. Forrest 
she had conducted herself with the Willis brothers 
in such a manner as left no doubt in their minds 
that she was an adulteress, and Christiana Under- 
wood described with considerable eloquence a 
certain all-night party at the Forrests' house 
which had shocked her sense of propriety. At 
six in the morning, she said, she had met Mrs. 



A FAMOUS AMERICAN ACTOR 87 

Forrest in the hall, " flushed and untidy," and 
her mistress had explained that they had been 
amusing themselves and that they were now 
going to have breakfast at the house of N. P. 
Willis. Underwood and Flowers also testified 
that they had seen her kiss Willis and his brother, 
and they retailed gossip about " locked doors," 
and incidents such as N. P. Willis calling before 
midday and on hearing that Edwin Forrest was 
at home immediately departing in a panic. 

Anna Flowers' evidence might have carried 
weight if she could have withstood with any success 
an enquiry into her own career, but her life, young 
as she was, was full of vicissitudes, and in addition 
to the numerous discrepancies and contradictions 
in her statements in the witness-box it was proved 
that she w T as an abandoned character. Despite 
the money she received for attending the trial, 
Anna must have regretted the prominence it 
gave her. 

But when all was said and done the evidence 
against Mrs. Forrest amounted to nothing more 
than this, that she was fond of male society and 
that she was unconventional. All the trivial 
happenings raked up by the defendant's attorneys 
did not amount to proof of misconduct, and it 
was known that Forrest himself must have known 
of these parties because they could not have been 
kept secret. He did not complain about them, 
and when he separated from her it was not on 
account of them. 

He had simply grown tired of her, and the day 



88 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

he parted from her he had had no intention of 
trying to break the marriage tie although he was 
then aware of the letter written by George 
Jamieson. But when the public had begun to 
discuss the separation and when many suggested 
reasons for it were in circulation the actor, know- 
ing that he was popularly supposed to be in the 
wrong, sought for a divorce in Pennsylvania and 
only when baulked forced his wife to sue him. 
For reasons of his own Forrest had not desired 
the case to be tried in New York, and when it was 
it was soon realised that he had had a selfish 
reason for his reluctance to face a jury. 

He might have made a more dangerous an- 
tagonist if he had not been so reckless in his 
charges, but once the evidence was heard it was 
felt that no case had been made out for him by 
his counsel. There was no direct proof that Mrs. 
Forrest had committed adultery, and the tittle- 
tattle of discredited and discontented servants 
and the small talk of avowed partisans of the 
man whose position in the world of the theatre 
was so powerful, amounted to nothing. It was 
different, however, when the wife's allegations 
were submitted to the jury. 

The first charge against Forrest, adultery with 
Josephine Clifton, who died some years before the 
trial, was proved by a former manager of his 
company and others. The actress had been a 
favourite of Forrest's and he had given her parts 
to play quite beyond her capacity, but his own 
popularity with the public had been sufficient 



A FAMOUS AMERICAN ACTOR 89 

to negative this handicap to the box-office. When 
her death occurred he had been profoundly af- 
fected, and his dislike of his wife dated from that 
event. He got into the habit of confiding in 
friends that " Mrs. Forrest had never been the 
same to him since the Macready affair " and, 
hinting that she preferred the society of the 
Willis brothers and certain English visitors to 
his own, posed as a neglected, unhappy husband, 
and withdrew into solitude. But he was not 
without his female companions to console him, 
although he had to frequent houses of ill-fame 
to find them. 

A procession of witnesses occupied the box in 
turn to speak to having seen the actor in certain 
establishments presided over by dealers in vice. 
Their evidence was contested and they were 
sharply cross-examined and occasionally bullied, 
but Edwin Forrest was too well known a per- 
sonage to be mistaken when seen, and the wit- 
nesses were unshaken. Incidents which he him- 
self had forgotten were raked up, and misdeeds 
committed many years previously were exposed. 
The combined effect was disastrous, and Mr. 
O'Conor's closing speech for his client made victory 
certain. 

Counsel was brilliant in the extreme and his 
epitome and review of the evidence were masterly. 
He related how Forrest had borrowed a copy of 
George Sand's " Consuelo " immediately the 
Jamieson letter had come into his hands in order 
that he might learn what sort of a person the 



go SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

heroine of the novel was. He had hoped to find 
that she was " all that she ought not to be," but, 
discovering that she was virtuous and chaste, 
he had realised that the fact would weaken the 
effect of the amorous epistle. 

The actor had been compelled to try and 
strengthen his cause by bringing in other men 
besides Jamieson, but he had overdone it, for if 
there was no case against the brothers Willis 
there could be none against the gentleman referred 
to by Mr. O'Conor as " poor old Professor Hack- 
ley," who had, indeed, been so scared by the 
mention of his name in connection with a divorce 
petition that he had scuttled out of New York 
like a frightened rabbit. 

The Macready controversy had had nothing 
whatever to do with the estrangement between 
husband and wife, counsel declared. 

Mrs. Forrest had never been deficient in loyalty 
to the man she had married, and Mr. O'Conor 
reminded the jury that he had read to them letters 
on the famous squabble in which Mrs. Forrest 
had satirically criticised Macready and had com- 
mended Forrest's treatment of him. She might 
have objected when he became coarse and savage 
in his attacks on the Englishman, but she had 
done nothing to give him the impression that 
she was opposed to him. 

Mr. Van Buren, leading counsel for Mr. Forrest, 
replied very briefly, and then Chief Justice Oakley 
summed up. It was an impartial and concise 
summary, and without expressing an opinion 



A FAMOUS AMERICAN ACTOR 91 

either way he dealt with the charges of adultery 
with six men which had been brought against 
Mrs. Forrest and the allegations of misconduct 
by her husband. The judge clearly intended to 
leave to the jury all the responsibility of coming 
to a decision, although he warned them not 
to regard evidence of unconventional doings of 
which they might not approve as proof of adultery 
by a woman who was not of their way of thinking. 

When the chief justice concluded it was nearly 
five o'clock on a Saturday, and the thirty-second 
day of the trial, and the jury did not arrive at a 
verdict before half past nine. By that time it 
was too late for it to be recorded in open court, 
and accordingly their written decision was sealed 
up until the following Monday morning. The 
scene on the thirty-third day of the trial was 
thus described in a contemporary report : 

January 26th. — The excitement this morning 
was intense. Thousands and thousands of the 
anxious public thronged the Park and rendered 
the approach to the focus of attraction, by the 
ordinary thoroughfare, impracticable. The coun- 
sel, the jury, the parties to the suit, and the 
reporters were obliged to effect an entrance through 
the adjoining court, and pass into the judge's 
chamber, which joins the room that has been the 
scene of action in this trial. 

At ten o'clock the Chief Justice took his seat 
upon the Bench, and the anxiety depicted on 
every countenance for the breaking of the sealed 
verdict was intense. 



92 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

Mrs. Forrest was in court, as was also Mr. 
Forrest, at an early hour. The fortitude which 
never left Mrs. Forrest during the protracted 
investigation seemed now to have almost deserted 
her, and she was faint with anxiety. She was 
almost subdued in strength — restless, watchful, 
and uneasy. 

Mr. Forrest looked anxious, but he looked like 
a man resolved to meet the worst that could befall 
him. These few minutes seemed, as it were, an 
hour to all, and, indeed, the plaintiff and defen- 
dant both bore strong evidence of the sleepless 
hours they must have passed since Saturday 
evening. 

The counsel on both sides, too, participated 
to the fullest extent in the anxiety of their res- 
pective clients. Even Mr. O 'Conor's stoicism 
deserted him, and his usually calm spirit now 
became perturbed. 

The Clerk of the Court called over the names 
of the jury, and all answered. He then said, 
" Gentlemen, have you agreed ? " 

Foreman : " We have." The foreman here 
handed the sealed verdict to the court. Breath- 
less silence reigned throughout the room while 
the Chief Justice was perusing the verdict. 

The Chief Justice returned it to the Clerk 
and desired him to read it aloud. 

Mr. Van Buren : "If the Court please, before 
the verdict is recorded, we wish to have the jury 
polled." 

The Chief Justice : " The usual way is to read 



A FAMOUS AMERICAN ACTOR 93 

the verdict first, and to poll the jury before it is 
recorded." 

Clerk : " Gentlemen, hearken to your verdict 

as it stands recorded." 

Mr. Van Buren : " No, not recorded, as it is read." 

The Clerk then read the following : 

" The jury will answer specially to the following 

questions : 

" First : ' Has or has not the defendant, Edwm 
Forrest, since his marriage with the plaintiff, 
Catharine N. Forrest, committed adultery as 
in the complaint in this action charged ? ' 
" ' He has.' 

" Second : ' Were or were not the said plaintiff 
and said defendant inhabitants of this State at 
the time of the commission of said adultery by 
the said defendant ? ' 
" ' They were.' 

" Third : ' Was or was not such adultery by the 
said defendant committed within this State ? ' 
" ' It was.' 

" Fourth : ' Was or was not the said defendant 
a resident of the State of New York, at the time 
of the commencement of this action ? ' 
" ' He was/ 

" Fifth : ' Has or has not the plaintiff com- 
mitted adultery as alleged against her in the 
answer in this action ? ' 
" ' She has not.' 

" Sixth : ' Was or was not the plaintiff a resi- 
dent and inhabitant of this State at the time of 
the commencement of this action ? ' 



94 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

" ' She was.' 

" Seventh : ' Was or was not the plaintiff 
an actual inhabitant of this State at the time 
of the commission of such adultery by the de- 
fendant within this State, and also at the time 
of the commencement of this action ? ' 
She was.' 
" Eighth : ' What annual amount of alimony 
ought to be allowed the plaintiff ? ' 
" ' Three thousand dollars.' 
" The jury say that the}^ find for the plaintiff 
on the whole issue in the pleadings, and that 
in answer they find in the affirmative on the 
first, second, third, fourth, sixth and seventh 
questions of fact specified in the order of December 
24th, 1850, and in the negative on the fifth question 
of fact specified in the said order. 

" And they find that alimony be allowed the 
plaintiff to the amount of three thousand dollars 
per year. 
" (Signed) 
Stephen W. Meech, Pelatiah P. Page, 
William Earle, Thomas B. Harris, 

Horace Beals, Meigs D. Benjamin, 

Theodore de Witt, J. N. Ernenpertsch, 
Daniel G. Edsall, C. S. Schlessenger, 
Calvin H. Merry, John Caswell." 
The audience applauded as the responses were 
given to the fifth and eighth questions. 

Mr. Van Buren : " We desire, if the court 
please, as I have already stated, that each juror 
should — " 



A FAMOUS AMERICAN ACTOR 95 

The Chief Justice : " You wish to have the 
juiy polled. Gentlemen, as each juror is asked 
if that is his verdict, he will answer in the affirma- 
tive or negative." 

The Clerk then interrogated each juror thus : 
" Is this your verdict as it will be recorded ? " 
To which Messrs. Meech, Earle, Beals, De Witt, 
Edsall, and Merry answered audibly in the affirma- 
tive. When Mr. Page was asked, he stood up 
and appeared unable to respond. He then sat 
down, leaving the whole court in doubt as to his 
reply. 

Mr. Van Buren : "I don't hear the gentleman's 
response." 

Mr. Page (aloud) : " It is." 

All the jurors answered in the affirmative. 

The Chief Justice : " Gentlemen, the next 
thing in order is to pay the jury a shilling each." 
(Laughter). 

Mr. Van Buren : "If the court please, we 
desire to make an application for time for pre- 
paration in respect to the questions which have 
arisen in this case, either by application for a new 
trial, or by bill of exceptions." 

The Chief Justice : " The proper course is to 
apply to the Judge in Chambers." 

Mr. O'Conor : " In respect to the time to be 
allowed for such measure as your Honor suggests, 
it must be in the nature of an application. Of 
course, on this subject, every facility will be 
accorded. The course which I propose, however, 
requires a movement in the Special Term, and it 



96 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

is necessary to ask the Judge in Special Term to 
assign any day to come before your Honor, in 
respect to the completeness of judgment. It is 
a matter to be disposed of by your Honor." 

The Chief Justice : "As respects application 
for time, that follows as a matter of course ; and 
as respects the formula to be observed, let the 
matter be adjourned over till to-morrow morning 
at ten o'clock, when the question can be gone 
into in detail, and at which time Mr. Van Buren 
may make any application." 

Mr. Van Buren : "I can then make both 
applications — an application for time, and also 
for stay of proceedings." 

The Chief Justice : " The application for time 
is granted as a matter of course." 

Mr. Van Buren : " We are to understand that 
the motions are to be made without any further 
notice to the other side. We would not be at 
liberty to make it here without consent of the 
court, and this was the reason why I inquired 
of the court whether an affidavit can be made here 
to-morrow morning." 

The Chief Justice : " Let the verdict be recorded, 
and the court adjourned till to-morrow morning 
at ten o'clock." 

Mr. O'Conor : "I believe that the simple form 
of asking the jury had they agreed to their verdict, 
has not been technically gone through." 

The verdict was then formally recorded. 

Mr. Forrest, accompanied by some friends, 
immediately left the court. As he descended to the 



A FAMOUS AMERICAN ACTOR 97 

Park, he was saluted with vociferous cheers from 
the assembled multitude, who continued to shout 
and cheer him on half-way up Broadway. 

Mrs. Forrest, after having been congratulated 
by her friends on the result, left the court escorted 
by Mr. O'Conor, through the back egress, into 
Chambers Street, where also a large concourse of 
people had congregated. Deafening cheers saluted 
her, likewise, and the crowd continued to wave 
their hats and to shout until the lady and escort 
gained the Irving House, where she at present 
resides. 

Edwin Forrest died on December 12th, 1872, 
and when his will was opened it was found to con- 
tain a most elaborate scheme for the endowment 
of a home for aged members of the theatrical 
profession. He left his not inconsiderable fortune 
to the project, but the widow's legal claims re- 
duced the amount available for the philanthropic 
enterprise, and although the home was established 
and was named after the actor, the greater portion 
of the endowment money came from the pockets 
of certain persons who wished to perpetuate 
Forrest's fame in a practical manner. 



CHAPTER VI 



A REAL MELODRAMA 



The great will suit, Bainbrigge v. Bainbrigge, 
instituted by direction of the Court of Chancery 
to determine the rightful ownership of certain 
historic estates in Derbyshire, Warwickshire, and 
Staffordshire, occupied five days at the Summer 
Assizes at Stafford in 1850, and was the medium 
by which the general public became acquainted 
with the extraordinary life-story of a member 
of a distinguished county family who had never 
recovered from the shock produced by an unhappy 
love affair. 

Few persons outside those immediately con- 
cerned were interested in the result of the action, 
and it was the revelations made by the Solicitor- 
General, Sir Alexander Cockburn, that drew crowds 
to the court. 

The public did not care who gained the property ; 
it was the eccentricities of Thomas Bainbrigge, 
the testator, that monopolised their attention, 
for the combination of the romantic and the sordid, 
vice and virtue, and the Jekyll and Hyde existence 
of the county magnate and magistrate proved fact 
to be stranger than fiction. 

According to the Solicitor-General, Thomas 

98 



A REAL MELODRAMA 99 

Bainbrigge was a young man possessed of great 
intellectual accomplishments, refined tastes, and 
polished manners. He was a welcome guest at 
the houses of the greatest social and political 
leaders in London and the country ; the former 
being desirous of providing him with a wife and 
the latter anxious to gain his support and influence 
at the polls. 

He was envied by all, for he appeared to have 
everything in his favour, and no surprise was 
expressed when he became engaged to the niece 
of an earl whose beauty had inspired more than 
one artist. Mr. Bainbrigge, senior, approved of 
his son's choice, and the date of the wedding 
was fixed, and the lawyers on both sides met to 
consider the important question of settlement. 

Here, however, a hitch occurred, for Mr. Bain- 
brigge took umbrage at the suggestions proffered 
by the young lady's parents regarding the amount 
of money they should contribute, and in his rage 
the old man peremptorily forbade the marriage 
taking place. 

The blow was a severe one to Thomas, but it 
proved fatal to the girl, for within a few weeks 
she died, and, although the doctors ascribed it 
to natural causes, Thomas Bainbrigge believed 
that it was due to a broken heart, and he swore 
that he would never go into society again, never 
marry, and live henceforth as a hermit. 

Quarrels between father and son became frequent, 
but when the former died it was found that he 
had not carried out his threat to disinherit Thomas, 



ioo SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

who succeeded to the complete control of the 
property. 

He was now a very rich man, with three palatial 
residences, and choosing Woodseat, near the 
Sherwood Forest, as his headquarters, he installed 
a handsome woman of thirty as his housekeeper, 
and began a course of conduct which startled and 
scandalised the whole county. He dressed like a 
tramp, mixed with his grooms, allowed pigeons 
to build their nests amongst the costly books 
in his splendid library, and, with a farm labourer, 
wearing a smock, as his coachman, drove about 
in a carriage in which fowls were roosting. When 
a horse offended him he solemnly tried it, and, 
having found it guilty, ordered it to be transported 
for life. On appeal — he was always the judge — 
he announced that he was graciously pleased to 
reduce the sentence to seven years' solitary con- 
finement, and the unfortunate animal duly served 
its term, spending the years in darkness, sustained 
by food craftily apportioned to sustain life. 

Yet on those rare occasions when Bainbrigge 
accepted an invitation to dine at a neighbouring 
mansion, he appeared correctly clothed in evening 
dress, and looked the spruce, polished man of 
the world to his finger-tips. Then his fellow- 
guests listened with relish to his clever remarks, 
which were always in good taste, and, naturally, 
could not credit the rumours which branded him 
as a half-crazy bully. 

When Bainbrigge took his place amongst his 
colleagues on the magisterial bench, his conduct 



A REAL MELODRAMA 101 

was equally blameless, but there is no doubt that 
he had two characters and changed them at will. 

Before his reputation had spread, however, 
something very important had occurred at Wood- 
seat, and that was the birth of a daughter to the 
housekeeper, of which Bainbrigge acknowledged 
the paternity. 

At first he was inclined to send the infant to 
London to be adopted there and forgotten, but 
the baby quickly gained his love, and although 
he had to banish the mother for misconduct he 
retained her little girl, lavished all his affection on 
her, and told all his acquaintances that she was 
his heiress. He engaged the best nurses and 
governesses for ner, and, when she was old enough, 
sent her to the best boarding school ; and, al- 
together, Betty — as he called her — had every 
advantage money could procure for her. When 
she was thirteen he made a will leaving her every- 
thing he possessed, ordered that, if she married, 
her husband should assume the name of Bain- 
brigge, and if she had any children the estates were 
to descend to them. Should there be no issue of 
her marriage the property was bequeathed, after 
her death, to his brother's sons. 

When Betty came back from her finishing school 
she was a very pretty and accomplished young 
lady, and her personality was sufficient to counter- 
act the prejudice created by her illegitimacy. 
She was received as Thomas Bainbrigge's daughter, 
but there were not many families which kept up 
an acquaintance with Bainbrigge, whose conduct, 



102 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

as time passed, was getting more eccentric and 
even outrageous. 

The trial of the horse, already described, was 
as yet some years off, but his drunken habits 
and violent conduct were gradually isolating him. 
Now, the owner of Woodseat did not worry about 
that, but it was unfair to expect a young and 
innocent girl, who had spent her most impres- 
sionable years in a luxurious boarding-school, to 
feel at home amid dirt and squalor and surrounded 
by servants who tried to imitate their master's 
vices and only succeeded in being beastly. 

Betty sought for friends amongst girls of her 
own age, but they repulsed her because their 
mothers had had reason to refuse to acknowledge 
her father, and eventually, the girl was driven to 
consorting with kitchenmaids and grooms. Bain- 
brigge generally laughed knowingly whenever he 
saw her chatting in the stableyard with his men- 
servants, and he made many sly references to 
possible intrigues with them. 

More than once he jocularly advised her to 
wait until he was dead before she married a stable- 
hand, and it was not surprising that in a mansion 
where everything was topsy-turvy the coachman 
should take advantage of his experience and 
Betty's ignorance to lead her into a course of 
conduct which compelled her to confess to her 
father one night that she was expecting a baby. 

Bainbrigge was furious with her, and imme- 
diately threatened to murder the scoundrel who 
had betrayed her. The coachman, however, had 



A REAL MELODRAMA 103 

anticipated danger, for when his employer sought 
him he was informed by a groom that he had 
removed himself to an unknown destination. 

" As soon as your baby is born you shall leave 
the house," he screamed at the terrified girl. 
" You have been ungrateful for all I have done 
for \ r ou." In reality Bainbrigge was to blame 
for the catastrophe, but there was no one to remind 
him of his responsibility. 

To mark his displeasure, he drew up another 
will, in which he left Betty two hundred a year 
for life and bestowed the rest of his huge income 
on his brothers and sisters and their children. 
" There, that's the last will I shall ever sign," 
he said to his lawyer, Mr. Blair. " Never again 
shall I trust man or woman, young or old." 

He was still angry with Betty when her baby 
was born, and he declined in coarse terms to see 
her or the infant. But when the day came he 
had appointed for her eviction he realised how 
lonely the place would be without her, and he 
withdrew his ban, and even paid for a nurse to 
take care of the child. 

It sounds like a novelette romance, but it was 
proved in court that within a few minutes of 
seeing the baby-girl for the first time he became 
passionately attached to her and swore that 
Marianne — as she was christened — should be his 
heiress instead of her mother. 

Marianne was a very beautiful child, chubby 
and blue-eyed, and with an angelic expression. 
Bainbrigge, becoming fearful lest the mother 



104 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

should take her away, would not allow her to leave 
the grounds surrounding the mansion, and made 
an order that she should be brought to him at 
certain hours of the day to satisfy himself that 
she was on the premises. 

He need not have worried, for Betty had no 
intention of disqualifying the infant for an in- 
heritance worth many thousands a year. Besides 
that, she was thinking of getting married. Wood- 
seat had become distasteful to her ; the sneers 
of the servants, the " cut direct " she now so 
often received from the ladies of the county, and, 
above all, her father's strange conduct being 
responsible for her desire to leave the place. 

There were several men who would have been 
willing to overlook her more notorious lapse, but, 
by a strange fatality, it was with the son of her 
father's bitterest enemy that she fell in love. 
Farmer Arnold and Thomas Bainbrigge had been 
engaged for years in a dispute respecting the 
Squire of Woodseat's right to shoot over the land 
rented by Arnold, and once at least they had 
had a bout of fisticuffs. 

It was only necessary to mention the farmer's 
name with any degree of politeness to send Bain- 
brigge into paroxysms of rage, and, had Arnold 
ever been found dead in suspicious circumstances, 
the police would have arrested Bainbrigge at once 
on suspicion. 

Betty was well aware of her father's animosity 
against his neighbour and tenant when young 
Arnold began to court her when she sought refuge 



A REAL MELODRAMA 105 

from the disgraceful scenes at Woodseat by going 
for long walks in the fields. He was a handsome 
lad, with a persuasive tongue, and he worked on 
her feelings so successfully that when a servant 
reported to his employer that he had seen Betty 
and young Arnold embracing, the squire's almost 
maniacal fit of passion did not frighten her into 
denying that she meant to marry the son of his 
enemy. 

Bainbrigge did not meet her confession with 
mere threats. The position was too serious for that. 
"You shall go away in care of two trusted servants," 
he thundered at her — she was only eighteen. " If 
I had the power to remove the Arnolds I would 
do so. As I have not, I shall remove you." 

Betty said nothing, and apparently was afraid 
to resist his authority. She knew that he was a 
violent man, and that it would be dangerous to 
rouse the evil passions of one who was almost a 
lunatic, but she communicated with her lover 
at least once a day, and she was able to give him 
the address of the house to which she was con- 
veyed by her father's orders. 

After a few days in her place of exile she escaped, 
and met young Arnold at the cross-roads, and 
with him she journeyed to the nearest town, 
where they were married. " Never mention her 
name to me again," shouted Bainbrigge, when the 
news of the elopement was brought to him. "I'd 
have forgiven her marrying the coachman, but 
now that she's the wife of my enemy she's dead 
to me from this moment." 



106 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

Of course, he made a fresh will — it was his 
custom whenever offended — and on this occasion 
he did not mention his daughter's name in it, but 
his grand-daughter, Marianne, was given every- 
thing. If the latter never had children, all was 
to go to his brothers and sisters, and that shrewd 
solicitor, Blair, was named a trustee to see that 
its provisions were carried out. 

There is little doubt that his daughter, now 
Mrs. Arnold, hoped that he would forgive her, 
but his hatred of her grew as his love for Marianne 
increased. Whenever a letter was received from 
either Mr. or Mrs. Arnold it was burnt unopened, 
and two servants who incautiously referred to 
his daughter were dismissed. Gloom now settled 
down on Woodseat, and Bainbrigge's eccen- 
tricities became so pronounced that it seemed he 
must soon be placed in an asylum. 

Three years after Betty's elopement with young 
Arnold, the master of Woodseat removed with 
his grand-daughter and servants to Green Lane, 
Derby. He was quite mad now, though he had 
his lucid intervals, and his passion for horse- 
racing helped to banish occasionally from his mind 
memories of his daughter's escapade, and then 
he could behave like a sane man and confound 
those who had spread rumours of his madness. 

He competed at the Derby races, and was 
thrown from his horse and sustained severe 
injuries. It was commonly believed that he 
was dying, and immediately the " wolves " 
gathered to try and despoil him, Hearing of his 



A REAL MELODRAMA 107 

accident and of the arrival of his brother and 
two nephews, Mrs. Arnold hastened to Green Lane 
and entreated the butler to allow her to see her 
father. 

" You are not to be admitted," said the servant 
insolently. He could not forget the intrigue 
between her and the coachman and, in the cir- 
cumstances, had no respect lor her. Again and 
again she laid siege to the front door, but there 
was always someone to bar her entry, and when- 
ever she threatened to claim her daughter she 
was invited to do her worst. 

" Tell her if she wants n^ forgiveness she has 
it already," said Thomas Bainbrigge, " but that 
she shall never have a penny of my money." 
However, when he was convalescent, he added a 
codicil to his will giving Mrs. Arnold fifty pounds 
a year for life, a legacy which was regarded by his 
daughter as an insult. 

Three more years of life were left to Thomas 
Bainbrigge, and he spent them in riotous living. 
Marianne, the grand-daughter whom he professed 
to love, was given into the charge of the servants 
and generally kept in a state of ignorance and dirt. 

The unfortunate child was taught to use foul 
language and to acquire some of the arts of the 
pickpocket, and it was her grandfather's hobby 
to send for her after dinner so that she might re- 
peat what she had learnt that day. 

" She's a chip of the old block ! " he cried, 
ecstatically, when Marianne, aged eight, reviled 
the servants in his hearing. One morning he 



108 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

suddenly decided that the female domestics were 
idle and worthless, and there and then he 
marshalled them and ordered them to leave at 
once. 

A girl who remonstrated at the shortness of 
the notice was seized by the throat and dragged 
choking from the house, and if the tactful Mr. 
Blair had not paid her a monetary compensation 
she would have had her master indicted at the 
assizes. 

A male staff was engaged, but it did not give 
satisfaction, and Bainbrigge was ever at war. 
On one occasion he had a fight with a tipsy groom, 
in which he was defeated, and for a fortnight 
he remained locked in his bedroom, the butler 
being admitted once a day with food and drink. 

The wealthy landowner was now existing mainly 
on brandy, while Marianne was growing up in a 
regular school of vice. But with all his madness, 
love of strong drink and weakness for the sordid 
and the squalid, Thomas Bainbrigge could behave 
like a gentleman whenever he liked. 

His fellow-magistrates saw nothing odd in his 
behaviour, and they met him when he was sup- 
posed to be mad, but they never came in contact 
with him in his own home, and it was proved that 
when there he was a different being. His conduct 
towards his grand-daughter was in itself proof 
positive that he was not sane, for he loved her 
and yet was making her ruin a certainty. 

Reference has been made to the will of 1815 
by which the estates were left to Marianne and 



A REAL MELODRAMA 109 

her issue, and, failing them, to the eldest son of 
his second brother. This will was still in existence 
when, in 1818, Bainbrigge indulged in a drinking- 
bout which brought him to his death-bed. His 
case was hopeless from the first, and when Mrs. 
Arnold was informed of it she went to him. 

There was now no one to deny her admission, 
because her father was incapable of giving orders, 
and she had the advantage of having a friend 
and champion in the person of Blair, the solicitor, 
who had his own reasons for wishing to see her in 
possession of the property. 

Blair was secretly an embezzler, and owed the 
Bainbrigge estate a considerable sum, and he 
knew that if the property ever came to Thomas 
Parker Bainbrigge, the testator's nephew, and, 
after Marianne and her issue, the heir, he would be 
called to account. 

It was now resolved by the conspirators that 
Thomas Bainbrigge should make a fresh will and 
that Mrs. Arnold should figure prominently in it, 
and, as a preliminary, arrangements were entered 
into to prevent any of Bainbrigge's brothers or 
nephews visiting him. No clergyman was sent 
for to minister to the dying man, who, when Blair 
hinted that another will ought to be drawn up, 
nodded feebly and expressed his willingnes to 
sign it. 

Accordingly, Blair wrote out a will leaving the 
estates to Mrs. Arnold and her children, should 
Marianne die without leaving an heir. To main- 
tain Mrs. Arnold, a sum of one hundred pounds 



no SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

a year was to be paid her during the life of her 
husband, and after his death the allowance was 
to be three hundred. None of Bainbrigge's 
brothers or sisters was mentioned, and the omission 
of their names from the will of 1818 had a powerful 
effect on the jury in 1850. 

Evidence was given at the trial that when 
Thomas Bainbrigge could not raise his hand or 
hold the pen, Blair put it between the dying man's 
fingers, and, holding his hand, controlled it as 
it moved along the paper. Thus, it was Blair 
who really signed the will, though Thomas Bain- 
brigge's name appeared at the bottom of it. 

Two days later, after this curious scene, he 
died, and Blair and his fellow-trustee took charge 
of the estates on behalf of the heiress, Marianne, 
who was only eleven. The child was removed to 
a school, and an attempt made to educate her, 
but heredity and her previous environment proved 
too much for her, and at sixteen she eloped with 
a man whose origin was as obscure as his means 
were infinitesimal. 

She had two children by him, and the succession 
to the property seemed barred from the Arnolds, 
but by 1845 both the children were dead, and 
Marianne herself was in her grave. During her 
lifetime the Bainbrigges had not interfered, for 
nothing could have deprived Marianne or her 
children of the estates, which both wills had given 
to her. 

When all were dead, however, a new situation 
arose, for the Bainbrigges believed that the will 



A REAL MELODRAMA ill 

of 1818, leaving the property to the Arnold's 
children in the event of Marianne's predeceasing 
them without any heirs, had been procured by 
fraud when the testator had been insane and too 
near death to be capable of understanding what 
he was doing. 

Accordingly, they appealed to the court, and 
the action was ordered. Sir Alexander Cockburn 
led on behalf of Thomas Parker Bainbrigge and 
endeavoured to show that the will of 1818 ought 
not to be allowed to stand. 

Many witnesses appeared on both sides, and 
Blair himself was examined, and admitted that 
he had, fourteen years earlier, become a bankrupt 
and that he owed a hundred thousand pounds, 
some of which was trust money. He, of course, 
spoke for the Arnolds, and he denied that he had 
helped Thomas Bainbrigge to sign the will. 

Lord Campbell, in summing up, rather in- 
clined to the side of the defendant, but the jury 
returned a verdict for Thomas Parker Bainbrigge, 
who thereupon became the owner of the estates. 

The defendants, however, obtained an order for 
a new trial, and it looked as though the property 
would be frittered away in a series of costly law- 
suits when the opposing parties were induced to 
meet, and, as a consequence, they agreed to com- 
promise and to share the estate amongst them- 
selves instead of letting the lawyers have it. 



CHAPTER VII 

SIR CHARLES DILKE 

The dinner given in honour of Sir Charles Dilke 
by the Reform Club in 1885 was, although those 
present did not know it, the culmination of a great 
political career. Few men had achieved so much 
in so short a time, and to have inspired enthusi- 
astic admiration in the high priests of Aristro- 
cratic Liberalism was a remarkable feat. The 
guest of the evening had reason to be proud of his 
public record. As a youthful member of Parlia- 
ment he had earned a flattering notice from Lord 
Beaconsfield. " He is a future Prime Mimister 
of the Liberal Party," said the famous Conser- 
vative statesman, and later when Randolph 
Churchill elbowed his way into the limelight the 
witty Disraelite summed him up in the expressive 
phrase, " Only Dilke and water." He would have 
been a Cabinet Minister at an earlier age than 
thirty-nine if he had not flirted for a time with 
Republicanism, and when he did become President 
of the Local Government Board he proved that 
he was as clever a constructive statesman as he 
had been a destructive critic. Added to his 
intellectual gifts were a compelling personality 
and charming manners, and, if obviously conscious 

112 



SIR CHARLES DILKE 113 

of his talents, he never obtruded his knowledge ; 
in fact, Dilke was a born statesman and diplomat, 
and just the man to lead and hold together a 
party composed of the many factions termed 
Liberal and Radical. 

On his way home from the dinner at the Reform 
Club he had cause to feel certain that he would be 
Gladstone's successor in the Premiership, but 
when he read the letter from an intimate friend 
which awaited him he must have realised that, 
politically speaking, he was a ruined man. The 
note was brief, and it requested Dilke to call early 
the next morning to discuss " grave business." 
Did the baronet understand fully what those two 
words meant ? I think he did, and that in the 
very hour of his triumph he became the prey of 
despair. 

For the " grave business " was a confession 
made by the wife of Mr. Donald Crawford, M.P., 
that she had committed adultery with Sir Charles 
Dilke. The latter instantly got into touch with 
his friends, chief among them being Mr. Joseph 
Chamberlain, Sir Henry James, Q.C., and Sir 
Charles Russell, Q.C., and they did their best to 
prevent a public scandal, but Mrs. Crawford could 
not be persuaded to withdraw her amazing state- 
ment, and the injured husband presented a 
petition for divorce. It could not have happened 
at a worse time for Dilke. 

The fight between the two great political parties 
was at its height ; within the space of a few months 
three ministries were formed ; the leaders on both 

H 



ii4 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

sides were severely tested, and the rewards for 
success were dazzling. Dilke, whose seat for 
Chelsea was impregnable, had been marked down 
for high office if Gladstone won, but as fate willed 
it, the Liberals came into power shortly before the 
hearing of the divorce suit, and the Prime Min- 
ister could only write to Sir Charles and express 
his regret that in the circumstances he could not 
include him in his Cabinet. By this time the 
co-respondent's only hope was an unimpeachable 
and unassailable triumph in the Law Courts, 
and on February 12th, 1886, he appeared with his 
counsel, Sir Charles Russell (Attorney-General), 
Sir Henry James (who had just refused the Lord 
Chancellorship because he disapproved of Mr. 
Gladstone's Irish policy), and Mr. Searle. 

It was because of their friendship with the 
baronet that they championed him, for James 
was not the man to act as junior to Russell or 
anyone else at the Bar, and the Attorney-General 
was almost overwhelmed with work. However, 
both were anxious to rehabilitate their colleague, 
and with Joseph Chamberlain in court to confer 
with them, they were very sanguine. 

In a multitude of counsel, however, there is 
little wisdom, and there can be no doubt that 
Dilke suffered from too much advice. Russell 
and James, after a conference with Chamberlain, 
decided not to put him in the witness-box, because 
Mrs. Crawford's confession not having been made 
in his presence and not being corroborated, there 
was no legal need for Dilke to be sworn and exam- 



SIR CHARLES DILKE 115 

ined. They assured him that the case against him 
must be dismissed with costs, and that he could 
never be cited again as co-respondent. 

The judge who presided was Mr. Justice Butt, 
and counsel for the petitioner, Mr. Donald Craw- 
ford, were Mr. Inderwick, Q.C., and Mr. R. S. 
Wright. Lockwood was present to represent Mrs. 
Crawford, but the action was an undefended one 
so far as she was concerned. 

Of course, only a small minority of the dense 
crowd which had beseiged the court got the op- 
portunity to hear Inderwick's speech ; and they 
were astounded by the evidence of Mr. Crawford 
and others and amazed when Russell announced 
the policy of his client, for to ordinary men it 
looked as though the co-respondent was taking 
advantage of a legal technicality to shirk the 
issue. 

However, before this state was reached Craw- 
ford had told the story of his married life, and a 
very remarkable story it was. He had married 
Miss Virginia Smith, the daughter of an M.P., 
on July 27th, 1881. The lady had been only 
eighteen years of age — less than half his own — 
but the match had been regarded as a good one 
for her, for Crawford was rich, and, if not exactly 
a prominent parliamentarian, he often came into 
contact with the leaders of his party by virtue 
of the minor appointment he held, that of secre- 
tary to the Lord Advocate for Scotland. 

Some months subsequent to the ceremony 
his wife had startled him by saying, " Donald, if 



n6 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

ever I was unfaithful to you would you forgive 
me ? I do not think you would." He had then 
replied that he would not, but he had treated the 
remark lightly, although he recalled it when in 
the same month he received an anonymous letter 
at the Home Office — where he carried out his 
official duties — containing the words, " Beware 
of the member for Chelsea." 

It was a cryptic but very suggestive message, 
and he showed it to Mrs. Crawford that evening 
when he was dressing for dinner. The member for 
Chelsea was, of course, Sir Charles Dilke, whose 
brother had married a sister of Mrs. Crawford, 
and the middle-aged husband laughed in unison 
with his young wife when she contemptuously 
disposed of it, and ended by throwing the letter 
into the fire. 

He was not a suspicious man, and he knew 
that the tongue of slander was very busy, especi- 
ally with young wives fond of pleasure who had 
married elderly men, and, tenacious as he was of 
his honour, he would not believe anything against 
the girl who, whatever her real feelings for him 
may have been, he loved. 

For nearly three years the Crawfords continued 
to live on good terms, and the Liberal Party being 
in power they took part in many of the social 
functions promoted by political hostesses. Oddly 
enough Sir Charles Dilke and Donald Crawford 
became closely associated, both being engaged 
in preparing a Bill for the redistribution of seats, 
and they were often together at the Local Govern- 



SIR CHARLES DILKE 117 

ment Board, and occasionally they met at the 
Reform Club. Thus they were on familiar terms, 
when in 1885 Crawford was the recipient of a 
second anonymous letter. This message was ex- 
plicit and to the point : " The first person who 
ruined your wife was Sir Charles Dilke." 

In the witness-box the petitioner stated that 
he discussed the letter with his wife, and that 
they agreed to keep the matter secret. The 
M.P. was perplexed and disturbed, but he was 
most anxious to protect Mrs. Crawford, and he 
was unwilling to cause scandal. A day or two 
later, however, he came face to face with Dilke 
in the House of Commons, and, he informed the 
court, the baronet instantly went livid with terror. 

The incident had some effect on him, and after- 
wards when he came across Dilke at the Reform 
Club the latter's manner was so constrained and 
nervous as to be highly significant. But even 
now he hesitated, and it was not until he returned 
home on the night of July 17th and found a third 
anonymous letter that he resolved to investigate 
the charge. 

The last communication in disguised hand- 
writing was emphatic and even melodramatic, 
but if highly coloured its meaning could not be 
mistaken. It read : — 

" Fool, looking for the cuckoo when he has 
flown, having defiled your nest. You have been 
foully deceived, but dare not touch the real 
traitor." 

Crawford read and re-read it in the hall before 



n8 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

going upstairs to the room where his young wife 
was in bed. 

" I must know one way or the other," he said 
sternly. " Is it true ? " 

She rose and stood at the foot of the bed. 

"It is perfectly true," she answered frankly. 
" I was sure I would have to tell you some time 
or other, and it is right that you should know it 
now. The real man who did me the injury is 
Charles Dilke." 

Once she started to confess there was no stopping 
her, and the astounded husband heard that within 
a short time of his marriage Sir Charles Dilke 
had made love to his wife, had persuaded her to 
meet him at a house in Warren Street, Tottenham 
Court Road, and that practically throughout 
the whole of their married life up to 1884 Mrs. 
Crawford and the baronet had been on the most 
intimate terms. 

Her statement was too circumstantial to be 
disregarded, and it bore the stamp of truth on the 
face of it. Her description of her midnight visits 
to Dilke's house and the subterfuges they had 
adopted to hoodwink his servants were astonish- 
ing. She also said that she had been completely 
under the influence of Dilke, and that if he had 
ordered her to perform the most ridiculous and 
insane acts she would have obeyed him promptly 
and willingly. 

Mrs. Crawford was not a witness, and could not 
be examined or cross-examined, but the fact that 
she had confessed was fully proved. No one, 



SIR CHARLES DILKE 119 

however, was called to show that she and Dilke had 
been seen together in the neighbourhood of the 
house in Warren Street, for the petitioner simply 
relied on the confession to obtain a decree of 
divorce in his favour. It was, therefore, Russell's 
right to demand that his client should be dis- 
missed from the suit with costs against the 
petitioner, and Mr. Justice Butt delivered judg- 
ment accordingly. Mrs. Crawford was divorced, 
and the co-respondent was acquitted because there 
had been no evidence against him beyond what 
:he lady had said in her statement of guilt. 

Mr. Chamberlain immediately scribbled a 
triumphal note announcing the verdict, and dis- 
patched it by special messenger to Mr. Gladstone 
at Downing Street, but he was premature, for 
iie had failed to appreciate at once the exact 
position the verdict left his friend in. The public 
were not hoodwinked by a legal quibble, and they 
could not see how it cleared Dilke. The judg- 
ment bluntly expressed was to the effect that 
whereas Mrs. Crawford had committed adultery 
with Sir Charles Dilke the latter had not com- 
mitted adultery with her, which, as Euclid would 
say, is absurd. 

The immediate consequences of his apparent 
triumph was to leave Dilke in a much worse 
position. He explained afterwards that he had 
placed himself entirely in the hands of his counsel 
and Mr. Chamberlain and that he had followed 
their directions, but his friends had given him bad 
advice, for by keeping him out of the witness-box 



120 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

they had created the impression that he admitted 
his guilt. 

Now Sir Charles Russell, Sir Henry James and 
Mr. Chamberlain were clever men of the world, 
and it is difficult to believe that they would have 
tendered such advice had they known Dilke 
to be innocent. Many persons were of opinion 
at the time that they were aware of their friend's 
guilt and that they thought that by taking 
advantage of a legal loophole they would secure 
an acquittal for Dilke, and he would be able to 
resume his political career, fortified by the fact 
that the case against him had been dismissed 
with costs. They forgot, however, that the public 
might not endorse the judge's decision. 

As soon as the real position was understood 
Dilke became frantic in his efforts to secure a new 
trial. This was, however, impossible. There was 
no appeal against the decision of the jury in the 
divorce court, and it looked as though the baronet 
must forthwith retire altogether from public life 
when his faithful friends by an arbitrary and un- 
justificable use of their political power arranged 
for the Queen's Proctor to intervene and seek 
an annulment of the decree of divorce on the spec- 
ious plea that it had been obtained by the sup- 
pression of " material facts." 

Russell, as Attorney-General, was able to stage- 
manage the back-stair manoeuvres that led up 
to the second trial, but he was powerless now to 
put Dilke back in the position of co-respondent, 
and he could promise him only that he would be 



SIR CHARLES DILKE 121 

called as a witness. He could do nothing more, 
and thus Dilke, not being a party to the proceed- 
ings, could not be represented by counsel. It 
was a serious weakness, because hostile witnesses 
could not be cross-examined nor any speeches 
made on his behalf, and Charles Russell, second 
to none at the English Bar, might have brought 
off a forlorn chance. 

It speaks volumes for the loyalty of Dilke's 
friends that Sir Charles Russell and Sir Henry 
James should have attended the trial although 
they could be only spectators. They could say 
or do nothing, and all their craity attempts to 
intervene were quashed by Sir James Hannen. 

The evidence was fuller than at the first trial, 
and, with Matthews to cross-examine the witnesses 
for the Proctor, the interest was heightened. Sir 
Walter Phillimore had to try to prove that 
Mrs. Crawford had not committed adultery with 
anyone, and his witnesses included private 
secretaries of Sir Charles Dilke, relations, ser- 
vants and friends of the baronet, and Dilke 
himself. 

The medley combined to swear that the baronet 
could not have been with Mrs. Crawford at the 
times named by her, and they endeavoured to 
convince the jury that the confession was an 
elaborate lie. Dilke categorically denied every- 
thing with one exception. 

" Did you tell Mrs. Crawford that you loved her 
because she reminded j^ou of her mother ? " 
asked Matthews, cross-examining. 



122 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

" I decline to answer that question," said the 
witness, with feeling. 

But, after all, the crux of the case was the 
evidence of Mrs. Crawford. In the witness-box 
she repeated her confession, and cross-examination 
did not weaken it. She was asked to describe 
the room in the Warren Street house in which she 
alleged she had been in the habit of meeting Dilke, 
and she offered to make a sketch of it from memory. 
She did so, and the result was to confirm her 
contention. 

"Is it true that you committed adultery with 
Sir Charles Dilke ? " said the leading counsel 
for her husband. 

" It is true," she replied in a low tone. 

A little later she pathetically referred to her 
husband. 

" I never loved him," she said with emotion. 
" I only married him because I was miserable at 
home, and all my family wanted me to marry him. 
He is very much my senior." 

It was another instance of the marriage of 
convenience failing when tested by time, but, 
in fairness to the memory of Donald Crawford, 
it must be stated that his motives were of the 
purest. In the course of the litigation which his 
wife's conduct gave rise to many names were 
tarnished, but not that of the petitioner, and 
Mr. Matthews was right when he declared that 
no one had dared to make the slightest aspersion 
against the character of his client, whose honour 
was unquestioned. 



SIR CHARLES DILKE 123 

For six days the trial proceeded, but it is easy 
to sum it up briefly. Mrs. Crawford had sworn 
that she used to see Dilke at a house in Warren 
Street, and when, to test this statement, she 
had been taken to the thoroughfare and requested 
to identify the building, she had pointed out one, 
and, although Dilke reiterated his denial of guilt, 
and was positive that he had never seen Mrs. 
Crawford anywhere except in society, it was, 
as the president of the court remarked, signifi- 
cant that the house she named was kept by a 
woman who had been for years in the service of 
the baronet. It would have been ridiculous to 
suggest that it was a coincidence. 

Then, in her confession, she had referred to a 
certain Fanny Stock as having been present 
when she and Sir Charles were together. Fanny 
ought to have been produced by Dilke in his own 
interests, but the girl vanished soon after the start 
of the divorce preliminaries, and was never seen 
in court. To further strengthen Mrs. Crawford's 
narrative three independent witnesses who lived 
in Warren Street, and who must have been un- 
biassed, swore that they had seen Sir Charles 
entering the house opposite, and that on each 
occasion he had been followed by a closely-veiled 
lady. Their testimony was in direct conflict to 
Dilke's oath that he had never visited the place 
more than once a year when he had called as a 
matter of courtesy to see his old pensioned servant. 

Evidence of interested friends and political 
partisans was practically useless against such 



124 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

testimony, and Phillimore and Bargrave Deane 
could not make out any sort of case for the Queen's 
Proctor. When the trial began the friends of 
Dilke may have been hopeful, but as it proceeded 
they must have realised that every day lessened 
the chances of victory ; and the cynical under- 
stood why Russell had kept his client out of the 
box at the hearing of the divorce suit. 

Mr. Matthews' speech for Mr. Crawford was a 
pugnacious, penetrating, and incisive oration 
which irritated Sir Charles Russell, but Sir James 
Hannen quickly reminded the Irishman that he 
must not interfere as he was only a spectator. 
Dilke interjected a loud " No ! " when counsel 
declared that his (Dilke's) first act on hearing 
of Mrs. Crawford's confession had been an attempt 
to bribe her into a retraction of it, but Matthews 
blandly protested and resumed. When Phillimore 
had done his best to meet his arguments the 
President summed up very fully. It was not 
in favour of the Queen's Proctor, and when the 
jury were asked for their verdict they took a 
quarter of an hour to settle a question which had 
been debated upon for six days. 

" We find it (the decree of divorce) was not 
procured contrary to the justice of the case," 
said the foreman. 

In a leading article " The Times " summarised 
the verdict aptly : " The jury in Crawford v. 
Crawford has found," it said, " that Mrs. Crawford 
has spoken the truth and that Sir Charles Dilke 
has not." 



SIR CHARLES DILKE 125 

The discomfited politician was not willing even 
now to abandon the struggle to vindicate him- 
self, and, although the change of government 
had sent his friends into opposition, he endeav- 
oured to secure the sympathetic co-operation of 
the new Law Officers — Sir Richard Webster and 
Sir Edward Clarke. Various queer proposals were 
considered by him and his friends, and the most 
ridiculous of them all was submitted to the 
Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General for 
their opinion. 

They were asked to charge Dilke with having 
perjured himself during the hearing of the case, 
Crawford v. Crawford, the Queen's Proctor 
intervening. 

The Law Officers, however, declined to institute 
a prosecution which they knew would be intended 
to fail. The}^ had no right to spend the public 
money to enable Sir Charles Dilke to wriggle out 
of the consequences of his own folly, and with 
their decision the last effort to save him collapsed 
and the baronet departed into obscurity for a 
term of years. 

He returned to public life later and as a private 
member had some influence, but his great talents 
were wasted and, when he died in 191 1 at the age 
of sixty-eight, the majority of newspaper readers 
were rather surprised to be told that he had once 
been a force in the world of politics and that in 
the days of his power he had influenced the fate 
of nations. Those who maintain that great events 
are merely the results of an aggregation of the 



126 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

trivialities from which they spring will prefer 
to think that the most important effect of the 
Dilke debacle was the fact that it convinced 
Queen Victoria that even a Divorce Court may 
justify its existence. She read all the details with 
avidity and rejoiced when the verdict went against 
the man who had distinguished himself by leading 
a campaign against parliamentary grants to cousins 
and other meagre relatives of his Sovereign. 
Victoria, the Goody-Goody, refused to receive 
divorced persons, innocent or guilty, to the end of 
her reign, but she liked to recall the service the 
Divorce Court rendered her when it banished Sir 
Charles Dilke from public life. 



CHAPTER VIII 



A BOGUS WEDDING 



The Marquis of Blandford (subsequently sixth 
Duke of Marlborough) had been married nineteen 
years to Lady Jane Stewart, daughter of the 
eighth Earl of Galloway, when " The Satirist," 
a lively weekly journal of the period, startled 
society in 1838 by printing a statement to the 
effect that he was a bigamist, that his real wife 
was a Miss Susan Adelaide Law, whom he had 
wed secretly in 1817, and that, consequently, 
his children by Lady Jane were illegitimate. 

It was a comprehensive indictment, and the 
sensation it created spread far beyond those circles 
in which his lordship moved, for the marquis was 
a member of Parliament, and by an assiduous 
cultivation of outward appearances was endeav- 
ouring to atone for a somewhat reckless youth. 

The sudden exposure of the most disgraceful 
episode in his life prostrated him, and he shrank 
from giving it further publicity by yielding to the 
advice of his solicitor and suing " The Satirist " 
for libel. 

But Lady Blandford would not permit the 
imputation on herself and her children to pass 
uncontradicted and disproved, and she compelled 

127 



128 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

her husband to apply to the court of the Queen's 
Bench for a rule for a criminal information against 
the publisher of the offending paper. The appli- 
cation was granted, and, notice having been served 
on the defendant, counsel appeared for him to 
argue on his behalf. 

It was then that the remarkable story of Lord 
Blandford's carefully-planned betrayal of a young 
girl was fully revealed. Susan Law was only 
seventeen when she became acquainted with the 
marquis in the vicinity of her parents' house in 
Seymour Place. He was seven years her senior, 
good-looking and a bit of a fop, and their meeting 
was not the accident she thought it was, for, 
struck by her fresh young beauty and vivacious 
expression, he had conceived a strong passion 
for her while yet they were strangers. 

However, he brought himself to her notice by 
pretending to mistake her for a lady of his ac- 
quaintance, and during the brief conversation 
that followed he took care to let her know that he 
was the heir to the dukedom of Marlborough. 
That gave a romantic aspect to the encounter in 
the eyes of the impressionable girl, and shortly 
afterwards Lord Blandford was a regular visitor 
at her home, where he was flattered and petted 
by the Laws, who foresaw the possibility of their 
daughter making a splendid match. 

There was no mistaking the fact that the youth- 
ful nobleman was in love with Susan, but they 
were quite wrong in their estimate of his intentions, 
for he was looking for a mistress and not a wife, 



A BOGUS WEDDING 129 

and he was determined that Susan Law should be 
the former. When, however, he hinted that 
marriage was impossible because of the prejudices 
of his family, the girl expressed her regret and, 
pointedly, advised him to seek a bride else- 
where. 

When he suggested that, as they were deeply 
attached to each other, their best course of action 
would be to set up house-keeping together, wait 
patiently until his father died, and then get married, 
her horrified rejection of it convinced him that 
he must resort to trickery to attain his object. 

According to Miss Law's affidavit, Lord Bland- 
ford, after his attempts to persuade her to become 
his mistress had failed, formally proposed to her, 
and when she accepted him there was a sort of 
family conference at the Laws' house at which 
the marquis put forward several reasons why 
the ceremony should be a secret one. 

Eventually he carried his point, and it was 
settled that the marriage should be performed 
in her own house. Lord Blandford's chief argu- 
ment in favour of secrecy was his father's oppo- 
sition to such a match, but he promised that his 
clergyman-brother should officiate, and Mr. and 
Mrs. Law and Susan were delighted at this, because 
the presence of the bridegroom's near relative 
would be evidence that all the members of her 
lover's family did not disapprove of her. 

The date was fixed, and close on midnight 
on the appointed day Lord Blandford arrived 
with a man whom he introduced as the " Rev. 



130 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

Lord William Charles Spencer-Churchill." The 
latter was dressed in clerical attire, and his ner- 
vousness was ascribed to his knowledge that he 
was acting against the wishes of his father, the 
duke. However, the ceremony was soon over, 
and the bride and bridegroom were congratulated, 
and a few days afterwards, as " Captain and Mrs. 
Lawson," they took up their residence in a house 
in Manchester Street. Except for two or three 
intimate friends, no one knew of his relations 
with Susan Law, and it was only when cir- 
cumstances compelled him that he took several 
of his relatives and friends into his confidence. 

One morning " Mrs. Lawson " was driving 
through St. James's Street when she saw an 
officer in uniform on his way to the palace. 
Attracted by his tall figure and gaudy attire, 
she scrutinized his face, and to her amazement 
immediately recognised the " clergyman " who 
had married her to the Marquis of Blandford. 

Young as she was, she must there and then 
have guessed that she had been tricked, and when 
she rose to meet Lord Blandford on his return 
to Manchester Street that night the blazing in- 
dignation in her eyes must have revealed to him 
that his deceit had been discovered. 

The scene that ensued ended in Susan going 
off into hysterics, and her distress was so terrible 
to witness that he promised to make amends 
and do all he could to atone for the past. She 
wished to return to her mother at once, but he 
persuaded her to remain while he consulted with 



A BOGUS WEDDING 131 

his uncle, Colonel Stewart, and his cousin, Lord 
G allies. 

It was a daring act to bring the latter into the 
affair, because he was the brother of Lady Jane 
Stewart, a young lady who had been chosen 
already by the marquis's parents as the most 
suitable bride for him. However, the cousins 
were bosom friends, and Lord Blandford knew 
that he could rely on him. 

What they advised him to do is not known, 
but the marquis subsequently conciliated Susan 
by explaining the marriage law of Scotland, 
which he proposed to take advantage of, and 
promising her that he would accompany her to 
Edinburgh and present her to his friends, the 
Marquis of Breadalbane, Sir William Elliott, and 
Sir Tyrrwhitt Jones, as his wife, for by thus 
acknowledging her not only would she become 
his legal wife but their four months' old daughter 
would be legitimised. 

The girl was naturally anxious to regularise 
her position, and when Lord Garlies and Colonel 
Stewart came to the house to be introduced to 
her, and volunteered to escort her as far as Bor- 
oughbridge, she believed that the man who had 
tricked her into a bogus marriage really meant to 
do her justice. His uncle and cousin were pleasant 
travelling-companions and they made the journey 
seem short. 

Nevertheless, she was glad to see the marquis 
at Boroughbridge and to have his company as 
far as Carlisle. From the latter city she jour- 



132 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

neyed alone to Edinburgh, where, on her arrival, 
she was met by Sir William Elliott, who had 
engaged suitable lodgings for her. 

The complicated travelling arrangements were 
meant to enshroud in secrecy the movements of 
the marquis until he could publicly acknowledge 
Susan Law as his wife in Scotland, and he did not 
join her at Edinburgh for some weeks. When he 
did, it was as Captain Lawson, and, according 
to his version of the " romance," the transference 
of their establishment to the Scottish city had 
nothing whatever to do with marriage. 

He swore that Susan had agreed to live with 
him in Scotland as " Mrs. Lawson " and that he 
never called her his wife in the presence of wit- 
nesses. He was confirmed by the Marquis of 
Breadalbane and Sir William Elliott, and, no 
doubt, they did not commit perjury, for when 
Susan was on her way to Scotland the man who 
had betrayed her was discussing seriously the 
possibilities of his marriage to Lady Jane Stewart, 
his cousin. 

She was a very beautiful girl, who had become 
doubly attractive in his eyes from the moment 
he had grown tired of the English woman. It was 
not likely, therefore, that he would strengthen 
the bond between himself and Susan. That was 
why Lord Garlies had assisted him to get her 
out of London, for the Duke and Duchess of 
Marlborough and the Earl of Galloway, Lady 
Jane's father, were in the metropolis with the 
sole object of arranging the match. 



A BOGUS WEDDING 133 

When he could get away from the parental 
roof, Lord Blandford hastened to join Susan, 
and for several months they lived together in 
Edinburgh and enjoyed the society of many of 
the nobility, although their wives would not 
associate with " Mrs. Lawson." Occasionally 
Lord Blandford had to go south on family matters, 
but he never gave her an inkling of what they 
were, and he did his best to prevent her discovering 
their nature. 

His father was now urging a public engagement 
between him and Lady Jane. The marquis's 
reasons for delay were growing feebler and more 
illogical with the paesage of time, and it became 
obvious that he could not maintain his double 
role for much longer. 

To add to his worries Susan suddenly decided 
that she preferred London to Edinburgh, and 
she would not change her mind. They accord- 
ingly returned to England, and took up their 
quarters in a hotel in one of the most obscure 
streets in the West end. 

" We had better rent a furnished house," 
the marquis said after a fortnight at the hotel, 
which was too public for him. " Very well," 
Susan answered, " I will look for one to-morrow." 
But she never went in search of a suitable residence, 
for that evening she heard that the marquis was 
engaged to Lady Jane Stewart, and that the 
marriage would take place a couple of months 
later. 

Taxed with his treacherous conduct, Lord 



134 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

Blandford could offer no defence, and as he had 
pledged his word to his cousin, he could not 
attempt to placate Susan with promises. He 
had to admit that he intended to marry Lady Jane, 
and he could only offer Susan monetary com- 
pensation. The girl did not desire a scandal, 
and she eventually consented to accept an allow- 
ance of four hundred pounds a year, which the 
Duchess of Marlborough was to guarantee. 

All the details of his scandalous behaviour had 
now to be made known to his parents, and they 
heard for the first time of the bogus marriage 
and the impersonation by a brother officer of their 
son of a clergyman of the Church of Eng- 
land. 

There were many recriminations on both sides. 
Lord Blandford's relations declared that Susan's 
father and mother could not have been deceived 
by the ceremony, even if she had been, and the 
Laws retorted that the nobleman was a cad and 
deserved to be horse- whipped. The duchess suc- 
ceeded in calming the storm. Her offer to be 
responsible for the payment of the allowance 
quieted the opposition, and at the appointed time 
Lord Blandford became the husband of Lady 
Jane Stewart. 

Twenty-one years later she was Her Grace the 
Duchess of Marlborough, and if rank and riches 
count for anything, ought to have been happy. 
But the marriage was not apparently a success, 
for her husband actually made overtures to the 
wronged and deserted Susan Law, coolly pro- 



A BOGUS WEDDING 135 

posing that they should resume their former 
partnership as Captain and Mrs. Lawson. 

He withdrew the offer on second thoughts, 
possibly because he foresaw that if an attempt 
were made to establish the legality of the secret 
marriage, the fact that he had deserted Lady Jane 
for Susan would be used by his enemies to prove 
that he had committed bigamy. 

There was also another advantage to be derived 
from outward respectability. He had political 
ambitions, and he had been chosen by his father 
to represent Woodstock in Parliament, that bor- 
ough being the property of the Duke of Marl- 
borough, body and soul. He, therefore, did not 
see Susan, who was living in London with her 
daughter, and who had become reconciled to her 
position. 

However, certain persons now knew all about 
her previous relations with the Marquis of Bland- 
ford, and a few of them were under the impression 
that she was legally his wife, and that the marquis's 
father was paying her an enormous allowance as 
hush-money. 

This was quite untrue, but to the credulous it 
appeared that there was proof of it. The sub- 
ject being freely discussed, it reached the ears of 
a disgruntled retainer of the ducal family, who 
retailed it to a gentleman who had an interest 
in " The Satirist." He promptly published it, 
and " the fat was in the fire." 

Miss Law was all the more willing now to assist 
the defendant in the libel action, because the 



136 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

Duchess of Marlborough had recently cut her 
annual allowance in half, and her affidavit was a 
damning exposure of the young aristocrat, who 
in less than two years was to succeed to the duke- 
dom. She declared that she had been known as 
Captain Lawson's wife in Edinburgh and that as 
this name had been merely an alias of the Marquis 
of Blandford she claimed that it had legalised her 
position in Scotland at any rate. 

The court, however, required proof that she 
had been introduced to some reputable persons 
as the nobleman's wife, and she could not produce 
anyone willing to give such evidence. On the 
other hand, the Marquis of Breadalbane and Sir 
William Elliott swore positively that they had 
never heard of Susan Law, except as the mistress 
of their friend, the Marquis of Blandford. 

The immediate consequence of the action against 
" The Satirist " was to make his lordship ex- 
ceedingly unpopular, and the judges who tried 
the case displayed unmistakable contempt for 
him. It was evident that he had taken advantage 
of a schoolgirl's trustfulness and innocence to 
ruin her, and that he had not scrupled to desert 
her when it pleased his fancy. 

The journey to Scotland and the officious 
interference of Lord Garlies and Colonel Stewart 
had been another plot to victimise and delude 
her, and every chivalrous person sympathised 
with the girl who had been at one time engaged 
in a single-handed contest against three men of 
high social position, and fully experienced in the 



A BOGUS WEDDING 137 

ways of the world. But there was Lady Blandford 
to be considered, and the court could not, without 
absolute proof, brand her children as illegitimate. 

Had it not been for his family, the application 
of Sir William Follett, the marquis's counsel, 
would have been refused, and her ladyship and 
her children would have been innocent sufferers. 

The presiding judge, Lord Denman, delivered 
judgment after a protracted conference with his 
brethren on the bench, and his decision may be 
quoted, as it incidentally reveals the estimation 
in which the plaintiff was held. 

" This is an application of a serious and in- 
teresting nature," said Lord Chief Justice Denman, 
" both as regards the parties affected by it and 
as it relates to the principles on which we ought 
to administer justice with respect to criminal 
informations. 

" I have not the least difficulty in saying that 
if Lord Blandford alone had applied for this rule 
I would never, for one, have consented to make it 
absolute ; for, upon his own statement, a strong 
imputation is conveyed on his own conduct 
towards a respectable young lady. 

" Her statements are, certainly, of a nature to 
create suspicion ; but that some contrivances 
were resorted to I have no doubt whatever, and 
I do not think we should be justified in pronounc- 
ing them to be perjured. 

" But Lord Blandford is not the only person to 
be considered. His wife and family complain of 
a libel which attacks them in their dearest in- 



138 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

terests and most tender feelings, and distinctly 
puts forward a series of imputations, with respect 
to which I agree with the learned counsel who 
have supported the rule, that there is nothing 
in the affidavits on either side to show that such 
imputations are well founded. 

" The Marquis of Blandford himself swears that 
there was no marriage either in England or Scot- 
land, and I do not find anything which, in fact, 
impeaches that statement. 

" Considering, therefore, the interests of the 
individuals I have mentioned, and the importance 
of warning those who are disposed to traffic 
with character in this way that they cannot be 
allowed to do so with impunity, I think we are 
justified in saying — notwithstanding the mis- 
conduct of Lord Blandford — that Lady Bland- 
ford, the Earl of Sunderland, and the rest of the 
issue of this marriage, are entitled to have this 
rule made absolute." 

Despite a varied and extensive experience of 
matrimony, genuine and bogus, the sixth Duke 
of Marlborough was never a success in the role 
of husband. He had three duchesses before his 
death in 1857, and his marriage to the third of 
these caused considerable surprise, for when the 
engagement was announced in 1851 it was well- 
known that he was paralysed in his lower limbs 
and that his days were numbered. 

But Miss Jane Stewart, a cousin of his first wife, 
was a lady who was ready to become a duchess on 
any terms, and who would have accepted his grace 



A BOGUS WEDDING 139 

had he been a lunatic, though her parents were 
mainly responsible for the match, her mother 
having practically forced the duke to propose to 
a girl in no way fitted to be a nurse. 

If ever there was a marriage of convenience, 
this was one, and the plotting and planning of 
the Stewarts became so patent at Blenheim that 
the staff were wont to make wagers as to the result. 
The young lady was constantly brought by her 
mother on a visit, and the " dear duke " was 
pestered with her presence and could not get 
away from her because he was helpless. 

Finally, he gave in, and asked Jane to marry 
him. She coyly consented, and the wedding- 
bells were again rung in honour of the nobleman 
with one foot in the grave. 

Within a few months husband and wife were 
leading " a cat and dog life," her grace having 
speedily found the companionship of a half-dead 
religious maniac, whose past would not bear 
investigation, very trying and exasperating. 

She accused him of " carrying on " with his 
middle-aged nurse, and before the second anniver- 
sary of her marriage she suddenly left Blenheim 
Palace with her baby and declared she would never 
return again to the man she had married. 

The duke dispatched agents to Brighton, where 
she had taken up residence, who forcibly recovered 
the child and restored it to its father. 

The duchess thereupon sought legal aid to 
regain possession of the baby, and thus for a 
second time in his life the duke figured prominently 



140 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

in an unsavoury case. The Galloway family, 
which had sided with him against Susan Law, now 
opposed him, and the litigation was protracted 
and created scandal. 

The deserted husband in his efforts to rehabili- 
tate himself after the aspersions of counsel for 
her grace, who had expressed the opinion that he 
was not a fit guardian for a child, had his counsel's 
speech on his behalf printed as a pamphlet and 
circulated by the thousand. For a huge fee Sir 
Richard Bethell (afterwards Lord Chancellor 
Westbury) had depicted his client as a sort of 
human angel and, of course, there were no 
references in his speech to the bogus marriage. 

Susan Law, now a middle-aged woman and a 
grandmother, must have derived a certain amount 
of satisfaction from the trial, which terminated 
in the rival parties, on the suggestion of the Vice- 
Chancellor, coming to an agreement, the duke 
promising to surrender the infant. 

Four years later the duke died, and was interred 
amid great pomp and ceremony. The successor 
to the title and estates proved himself a better 
man than his father, and, as one of the most suc- 
cessful viceroys Ireland ever had, he has his place 
in history. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE NEWMAN HALL TRIAL 

Amongst great Nonconformist preachers, Christo- 
pher Newman Hall holds an assured place. He 
had not the dramatic intensity of Dr. Parker, or 
the magnetic influence of Spurgeon, but he was 
more cultured than either, and in his efforts to 
reach the multitude he was never vulgar. A 
lover of learning for its own sake, he was an en- 
thusiast in the cause of education, and Gladstone 
and other statesmen were eager to avail them- 
selves of his advice and assistance. 

His was a long life — he was born in 1816 and 
he died in 1902 — and for over fifty years he was 
an active minister of the gospel, preaching thou- 
sands of sermons, lecturing in two continents, and 
doing considerable literary work which included 
seven hymns now in common use. 

It was a remarkable record, especially when we 
remember that for nearly a quarter of a century 
his domestic affairs were in a chaotic condition, 
and he suffered acutely from the conduct of the 
woman, who, in the words of Hannen, had never 
been intended for the position of wife of a minister. 

Hall, fearful of a scandal, strove manfully to 
keep his troubles a family secret, and it was 

141 



142 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

when he realised that he was merely deceiving 
and injuring himself that he took the steps which 
led to one of the most sensational and protracted 
of divorce suits. 

The first inkling the world had that all was 
not well between husband and wife, was an ad- 
vertisement in " The Times " to the following 
effect : " Whereas during the absence of the 
Rev. C. Newman Hall on his travels in the East, 
false and malicious libels respecting Mrs. Hall 
have been circulated, a reward of £100 will be 
paid for information which may lead to the 
detection of the authors." 

It set the town talking early in 1873, and it 
had the undesired effect of giving greater publicity 
to a broadsheet censuring the conduct of the 
minister's wife, which had been distributed in 
the neighbourhood of her home. When Newman 
Hall returned to England he was furious with 
the author of the advertisement, who proved to be 
Mrs. Gordon, Ins mother-in-law, but it was im- 
possible to remedy the mischief it had done, and 
the angry husband immediately filed a petition 
for divorce, as there appeared to be no reason 
now for remaining impassive. 

He quickly withdrew it, however, when his 
chapel colleagues pointed out the disastrous in- 
fluence his divorce would have on his appeal for 
sixty thousand pounds to build the new temple 
in Westminster Bridge Road, and it was not 
until three years subsequent to the opening of 
Christ Church, that he presented a second petition, 



THE NEWMAN HALL TRIAL 143 

which was duly investigated by Sir James (after- 
wards Lord) Hannen and a special jury. 

By that time the success of his tabernacle which 
had been opened on July 4th, 1876, the anniver- 
sary of the American Declaration of Independence, 
was firmly established, and Hall was strongly 
entrenched in popular favour. He had been one 
of the few eminent Englishmen who had sym- 
pathised with the Northern States in the American 
Civil War, a sympathy which was rewarded by a 
donation of £7,000 from the United States, to 
pay for the Lincoln Tower and the spire of Christ 
Church, in which can be seen the Stars and Stripes 
deftly wrought into the stone, while the British 
Lion and the American Eagle mark the angles 
of the tower. 

America and Great Britain were deeply in- 
terested in the legal proceedings, and the sen- 
sation created by the charge Newman Hall brought 
against his wife was doubled when it became 
known that she had retorted by accusing him of 
adultery ; but this was merely the venomous 
spite of an infuriated and baffled woman, and 
half-way through the hearing her counsel, unable 
to advance even the smallest evidence in support 
of it, withdrew it, and the net result was to en- 
hance the reputation of the reluctant and unhappy 
petitioner. 

Counsel for the husband were Sir Henry James, 
Q.C., Mr. Inderwick, and Dr. Tristram. Mrs. 
Newman Hall had Mr. Willis, Q.C., and Mr. Bay- 
ford, and on behalf of the co-respondent, Frank 



144 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

Richardson, Mr. Kemp appeared. All three of 
the parties cited entered the witness-box and 
explained and denied as circumstances rendered 
necessary, and their evidence, taken with the 
speeches of counsel, formed a complete matrimon- 
ial history of the popular divine and his frivolous 
and unconventional wife. 

When in the year 1846 Christopher Newman 
Hall married Charlotte, daughter of Dr. Gordon, 
of Hull, he was in charge of Albion Chapel in that 
town, and had gained a considerable reputation. 
The lady, only eighteen and, therefore, twelve 
years his junior, was beautiful, capricious, and 
highly intellectual. 

Sir Henry James described her as a spoilt darling 
of doting parents who had, even when she was a 
child, permitted her to have her own way in 
everything, but although she married an indulgent 
man, his circumstances and position entailed 
certain duties and responsibilities which he ex- 
pected his wife to share, and her refusal to do so 
laid the foundation of the troubles which made the 
marriage an utter failure. 

For eight years Mr. and Mrs. Newman Hall 
remained in Hull, and then he was called to the 
pastorate of the Surrey Chapel, in Blackfriars. 
Before this, however, there had been several 
quarrels, due mainly to Mrs. Newman Hall's 
dislike of her husband's profession. 

She complained that her position was dull and 
uninteresting. She wished for gaiety and frivolity ; 
he asked her to help him with his work and lighten 



THE NEWMAN HALL TRIAL 145 

the burdens which are amongst the penalties of 
fame. She refused entirely, and it was as much as 
he could do to induce her to attend his chapel 
occasionally. The young wife would not wax 
enthusiastic about mothers' meetings and district 
visiting, and her discontent became chronic. He 
endured in patience, subordinating his own wishes 
to hers whenever possible, for he was determined 
at any price to secure peace and to prevent the 
public learning of the collapse of his hopes. 

But with his transference to London bad became 
worse, and in a few days the position was too 
critical to submit of further concealment. 

Mrs. Newman Hall, highly-strung and, so she 
averred, super-sensitive, took to smoking to soothe 
her nerves. The popular preacher was horrified, 
but was powerless. Smoking is universal amongst 
women nowadays, but in the late fifties it was 
taboo. 

The outraged husband found a little comfort 
in the fact that she indulged in the practice behind 
closed doors. That was something to be thankful 
for, but it was forgotten when she announced 
that she wished to hunt. It was a very worldly 
occupation for the wife of an eminent congrega- 
tionalist minister, and he said so, emphasising his 
disapproval by reminding her that their religion 
was essentially democratic, and that his followers 
would not approve of his wife indulging in a hobby 
popularly supposed to be one of the privileges 
of the idle rich. 

She answered his argument by going to Tring 

K 



146 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

and buying a horse, and soon after she had begun 
to hunt regularly she introduced to her husband 
a good-looking young man, Frank Richardson, 
the son of the landlord of the hotel at Tring where 
she stayed when hunting, and bespoke his patron- 
age for the youth on the plea that he was about to 
start a livery-stable and deserved encouragement. 

Richardson's manner was respectful, and, as 
he had been born the year Mrs. Newman Hall 
was married, no suspicion entered the pastor's 
head that there could be any affection between his 
wife and the youth. The latter was so obviously 
her inferior in every way, that to think of them as 
social equals struck him as ridiculous. He was, 
therefore, kind to Richardson, and when his wife 
requested permission to give him shelter in their 
house because he was in danger of arrest from 
debt, hospitality was extended to Richardson 
for three weeks. 

His compliance with his wife's wishes was in- 
spired by the memory of the many exhausting 
and alarming scenes which had followed on re- 
fusals to humour her. In 1863 Mrs. Newman 
Hall had grown to dislike her husband so much 
that she refused to occupy the same room with 
him, and they had since had separate bedrooms. 

The servants did not fail to talk of this and 
other matters, and while the minister was bliss- 
fully unconscious of the publicity thus given to 
his private affairs, the neighbourhood discussed 
little else. Husband and wife were living as 
brother and sister — to use his own description — 



THE NEWMAN HALL TRIAL 147 

when Frank Richardson came into their lives, 
and, failing to withdraw when he saw for himself 
the real position, he brought things to a head. 

From the day of his arrival as a temporary 
lodger his hostess monopolised his company. 
She sat for hours with the livery-stable keeper 
in a room with the door locked, and they smoked 
together all day long when they were not out 
walking. When Richardson resumed work at his 
stables, the preacher's wife was his best customer, 
and when she changed into her riding habit and 
back again into her ordinary attire, she did so in 
a room over the stables next to Richardson's 
bedroom. 

There were remonstrances from the nervous 
husband, both verbal and in writing, but Mrs. 
Newman Hall was his match at either. They 
were both fond of writing long letters. Once 
the minister urged her to be discreet and told her 
so in an epistle extending to eighteen pages. She 
retorted with one running to twenty-eight. 

" Don't read any more letters," pleaded a jury- 
man on the fifth day of the trial. " They are so 
long ! " 

" Twenty-six pages ! " wearily exclaimed 
the President of the Divorce Court on an- 
other occasion. " That seems to be the 
average length of the letters of these very volu- 
minous correspondents." 

Counsel for the petitioner described a bitter 
quarrel just before morning service which ended 
in Mrs. Newman Hall rushing to her room and 



148 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

remaining there for the rest of the day. When 
the pastor returned from the delivery of a very 
successful sermon, he found a notice affixed to the 
door informing him that it would be wiser for 
them not to meet again that day. The incident 
was typical of the curious relations between them, 
which were aggravated by her strange friendship 
with Richardson. 

There was, however, no definite charge by 
Newman Hall of misconduct up to the time of 
their separation by mutual consent. This occur- 
red in 1870, when she agreed to live apart from 
him in return for an allowance of £200 a year, 
which added to her small means, enabled her to 
set up on her own account. 

It was, as Sir Henry James explained, some 
time after the separation that his client had good 
reason to suspect that his wife had committed 
misconduct with Frank Richardson. Reports 
reached him of visits to Brighton and other places 
where, by arrangement, she was meeting the man 
who was young enough to be her son. 

A lodging-house keeper at Brighton described 
at the trial how she had been compelled to request 
Mrs. Newman Hall and the livery-stable keeper 
not to make a noise at two in the morning. She 
swore that when she knocked on the door it 
had been locked, and that when Richardson 
opened it, she saw the lady reclining in an arm- 
chair smoking, while the atmosphere of the apart- 
ment suggested that they had been puffing away 
for several hours. 



THE NEWMAN HALL TRIAL 149 

Another witness told of incidents at a hotel 
which, if true, convicted the minister's wife of 
adultery, but the accuracy of these statements 
was vigorously denied by the respondent and 
co-respondent, Mrs. Newman Hall being very 
emphatic in her denials. 

A very convincing case was made out by Sir 
Henry James and his witnesses, of whom the 
Rev. Christopher Newman Hall was, of course, 
the chief, his account of his married life exciting 
general pity. He revealed much that had been 
kept hidden, and he described with simple elo- 
quence his efforts to prevent the failure of his 
marriage interfering with his success in the pulpit. 

He related that, when he had been invited to 
America by the Nonconformist churches there, 
a hearty welcome had been extended to his wife, 
who had declined it contemptuously, preferring 
the society of the uneducated groom to that of her 
husband and the personages he would meet on 
the other side of the Atlantic. But she had become 
so infatuated with Richardson that although she 
was a middle-aged woman she was content to risk 
her happiness and her reputation for the sake of 
a man who, according to his own counsel, was 
not a gentleman and was not animated by the 
feelings of one. 

The petitioner swore that the separation had 
been forced on him and that he would not have 
sought for a divorce if he had not been convinced 
that it was a duty he owed to himself and his 
church. He said that he had always given in to 



150 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

his wife and had provided her with luxuries 
he could not afford. 

She had known all about him before their 
marriage, for he had told her and her parents that 
he had begun to earn his living as a compositor 
in the office of his father, who had been the pro- 
prietor of a Maidstone journal, and was a self- 
made man. He had made no claim to aristocracy ; 
he was of the people, and wished to remain with 
the people as one of them all his life. 

When Mr. Willis rose to cross-examine he 
looked very solemn and the crowded court fully 
expected that he was going to pulverise the witness, 
but all he did was to extract from him an admission 
that as soon as he was freed from Mrs. Newman 
Hall he intended to marry again. 

" You have told a certain young lady this ? ' 
asked Willis, in his heaviest and most portentous 
manner. 

" I have," answered the minister, calmly, and 
counsel mentioned something derisive about an 
old man being in love, for Newman Hall was then 
sixty-three, but the remark had no point and fell 
flat. There were a few more questions hinting at 
harshness towards his wife, but the witness dis- 
posed of them satisfactorily, and counsel devoted 
himself to various hints and insinuations that 
really meant nothing. Willis was character- 
istically aggressive when declaring his client's 
interests. 

Mrs. Newman Hall may have confessed to 
having been in the habit of kissing the co-res- 



THE NEWMAN HALL TRIAL 151 

pondent every time they had met from 1864 on- 
wards ; she may have admitted that she loved 
him ; Willis declaimed about her purity and her 
disinterestedness, and all but presented her with 
a pair of wings and a halo. 

With the appearance of the respondent in the 
witness-box the excitement increased. Mrs. 
Newman Hall was now fifty-one, and traces of 
her former beauty were meagre, but she looked 
what she was — a woman with a mind of her own, 
determined, obstinate, wilful, and intelligent. She 
replied to the questions of her own counsel with 
vehemence, and generally managed to take the 
whole court into her confidence whenever she 
delivered an opinion. Now and then she ex- 
hibited a pronounced dislike of her husband, 
who had been cruel to her, and who had never 
understood her peculiar temperament. She could 
see nothing wrong in her friendship for Frank 
Richardson, which had been purely platonic. 

When Sir 'Henry James began to cross-examine 
her the reporters were provided with numerous 
openings for the use of " laughter " in brackets. 
The moment she saw James rise her expression 
hardened and her body stiffened, and she prepai d 
to give counsel as good as he gave her. 

They fenced cleverly for half an hour before the 
court adjourned, and the next morning the du.l 
was resumed. 

" May I inquire ? " said Sir Henry, when she 
interrupted him. 

" Wait a moment — I haven't removed my veil," 



152 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

she cried irritably. Loud laughter greeted this 
rebuff, and the President sat up and took notice. 
Within five minutes he had to reprove her. 

" You mustn't cross-examine Sir Henry," he 
said gently, and the witness shrugged her shoulders 
to indicate her contempt for the slowness of the 
famous barrister, who put another question to 
her with stolid politeness. 

Mrs. Newman Hall let him repeat it, and 
then she jerked her head in the direction of 
Mr. Willis. 

" Shall I answer that ? " she said coolly. 

" Please do," her counsel advised her. 

James pressed her on the subject of kissing. 
He wished to be informed how often she had kissed 
Frank Richardson. 

" I don't know," she replied tartly. " It's so 
long ago. You forget that you are referring to 
the year 1869 now." 

" But surely you can remember if you kissed 
him ? " persisted Sir Henry. 

She surveyed him with a pitying smile. 

" Do you remember whom you kissed ten years 
ago ? " she asked, and this time the loud laughter 
was justified. Sir Henry James was a solid 
rather than a brilliant lawyer, and he carried his 
reputation in his face. Those who can recall him 
as he was when a leader of the Bar will find it 
hard to associate him with any sort of flirtation 
however mild. 

When Mrs. Newman Hall demanded an account 
of his kissing exploits the only person in court 



THE NEWMAN HALL TRIAL 153 

who did not smile was James, who waited patiently 
for the hilarity to cease before resuming. 

In the most unequivocal terms the volatile wit- 
ness declared that she loved Frank Richardson, 
but that she had never committed adultery with 
him. She informed judge and jury that she had 
kissed him, alleging that she had had a precedent 
for it in her own husband who had been in the 
habit of kissing various female members of his 
congregation. 

This was not true, but Mrs. Newman Hall did 
not mind that. Three times she burst into tears 
when Sir Henry James was bearing heavily on 
her, and her examination was interrupted to per- 
mit her to leave the court and recover. But she 
was never at a loss for an answer, and she kept 
everybody on the qui vive whilst she declaimed 
against her enemies. 

If Willis had not been there to implore her to 
obey the judge's ruling her stay in the witness- 
box would have ended with her committal for 
contempt of court. It is possible that she was 
vain of her cleverness and considered that she 
had scored over counsel and damaged her hus- 
band's character, but in reality she injured her 
own cause and unintentionally proved a real 
help to the petitioner. 

Of the witnesses who tried to disprove the 
charge of adultery against Mrs. Newman Hall 
the principal were her mother and Frank Richard- 
son. The former repeated her daughter's accu- 
sations of ill-usage at the hands of her husband, 



154 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

and when shown a letter of hers in which she 
stated that Charlotte was in the wrong, she said 
that it had been written at Newman Hall's dicta- 
tion and in fear of divorce proceedings which she 
had been anxious to prevent. 

Mrs. Gordon, the author of the remarkable 
advertisement in " The Times," had not been 
on good terms with her son-in-law since he had 
upbraided her for her folly in proclaiming his 
misery to all and sundry, and she strenuously 
opposed him at the trial. 

The co-respondent was asked what he thought 
of Mrs. Newman Hall's statement that she loved 
him. 

" I have every affection for her as a friend," 
he replied, and would not be more explicit. 

He swore that there had been no misconduct 
between him and the lady, and he characterised 
the evidence of the other side as untrue. He said 
that he had never gone to a hotel with her or 
occupied a room with her anywhere, and he had 
plausible, if unconvincing, explanations of the 
smoking parties in which they had been the only 
participants. 

James, Willis, and Kemp did their best on 
behalf of their clients before Sir James Hannen 
summed up in a speech which was an elaborate 
review of the evidence. 

It was not favourable to the respondent and 
co-respondent, and yet it was not the effort of a 
partisan. He dealt with facts from a common- 
sense point of view, and the effect was dramatic, 



THE NEWMAN HALL TRIAL 155 

for when he had concluded the jury consulted 
for a moment and then, without having left the 
box, returned a verdict for the petitioner and 
dismissed the charge against him, which had 
been withdrawn by Willis. 

Six months later the decree nisi was made 
absolute, and a few weeks afterwards the Rev. 
Christopher Newman Hall married again. 



CHAPTER X 

LORD AND LADY ELGIN 

The seventh Earl of Elign, who died in 1841, is 
chiefly remembered because of his association 
with the Elgin Marbles, that famous collection 
of Grecian statuary and relics now in the British 
Museum, but his lordship was a distinguished 
diplomatist in his day, representing Great Britain 
at Berlin and Constantinople, and performing 
many useful services on behalf of his country. 

In a lifetime crowded with achievements he 
had one great misfortune, for throughout the 
years 1806, 1807, and 1808 he was involved in 
litigation arising out of his wife's misconduct, 
and to a person of his proud and sensitive nature 
the publicity and notoriety were sheer torture. 

The great Napoleon was indirectly the cause 
of all the trouble when he detained the earl on 
the outbreak of hostilities in 1803. Lord Elgin, 
ambassador to Turkey, was travelling to London 
from the Sublime Porte, when, in passing through 
France, he was held a prisoner by order of Buona- 
parte, and it was not until 1806 that he saw 
England again. 

His detention was illegal, but not too irksome, 
for he was permitted to occupy a private house 

156 



LORD AND LADY ELGIN 157 

in Paris, and Lady Elgin was allowed to join him. 
Despite obvious difficulties, they entertained their 
less fortunate fellow-subjects, and, common mis- 
fortune eradicating all social barriers, the earl 
and countess made the acquaintance of persons 
they would never have come into contact with had 
not the current of their lives been disturbed by 
war. 

Amongst them was a gentleman of the name 
of Ferguson, who had means and a personality, 
and whose incurable optimism made him a wel- 
come guest at a time when there seemed to be 
only one possible termination to hostilities — 
the complete triumph of Napoleon. 

Ferguson and other detenus were often at the 
Elgins' house, and if he could not claim a previous 
acquaintance with her ladyship — who was a 
daughter of William Hamilton Nisbet, of Dirleton 
and Bellhaven, Haddingtonshire — he could boast 
of having known her father and of having many 
friends in common with her. He could speak to 
her of her native place, of Scottish mansions he 
had been in the habit of visiting, and he had 
stories to tell of Edinburgh and Glasgow society 
which were fascinating to her because of her exile. 

It is not surprising, therefore, that they should 
have become close friends. Ferguson was one 
of those men who appear to know something 
of everything, and he was a complete contrast to 
Lord Elgin, whose diplomatic experience had 
made him cautious in expressing an opinion, 
and a better listener than talker. But the chief 



158 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

topic of conversation amongst the British in Paris 
was, naturally, the prospects of freedom. 

Occasionally they were excited by the news 
that the French government had agreed to ex- 
change them en bloc for a similar number of French 
prisoners of war, but nothing came of it. How- 
ever, their hopes were kept alive by the departure 
at intervals of those of their compatriots who 
had been fortunate enough to secure an exchange, 
and Lord and Lady Elgin strove hard to obtain 
permission to make the journey to England to- 
gether. Napoleon, however, was too well aware 
of the earl's importance to part with him except 
in very special circumstances, and the British 
had yet to capture a Frenchman whose rank and 
value to the consul would force him to liberate 
Lord Elgin. Accordingly, the lower rank of the 
detained the better his chance of freedom, and it 
followed that Ferguson stood to gain his long- 
before his noble friend. 

The very intimate and particular friendship 
which had sprung up between him and Lady Elgin 
could not render liberty less attractive, and when 
his chance came he took it and hastened home. 

Garrow, who eventually became a judge, hinted 
in his speech for the plaintiff at the action 
for criminal conversation that Ferguson and the 
countess had already committed adultery when 
the former left Paris, and that he had travelled 
to England with greater zest because her ladyship 
— who, of course, was not a prisoner of war — had 
promised to follow him, for, with the husband 



LORD AND LADY ELGIN 159 

detained in Paris, they would be safe from ob- 
servation in Great Britain. That was denied, 
but there can be no doubt that Ferguson took 
full advantage of the earl's helplessness. Later 
on he was to play an even more treacherous part, 
for, once he was home again, her ladyship had 
only one possible excuse for leaving Paris to be 
near him, and that was to try and secure Lord 
Elgin's release also. 

It was with the keenest regret that the earl 
consented to her journeying to London, but she 
promised to interview the prime minister and 
others, and not to rest until she had persuaded 
the cabinet that they must at any cost get her 
husband home again. 

" I expect Mr. Ferguson will help you," said 
the unsuspecting earl the morning of her departure. 

" I am sure he will," assented Lady Elgin 
without a tremor or any sign of nervousness. " If 
possible, I will see him on my arrival." 

Once she was in London a regular comedy of 
deceit began. Ferguson, auxious to pose as the 
grateful friend, wrote to Lord Elgin describing 
his efforts on his behalf. Lady Elgin also com- 
posed lengthy letters detailing visits to influential 
personages, most of whom she had yet to see. 
It frequently happened that the nobleman re- 
ceived communications from his wife and her 
lover the same day, and, as both told of hours 
spent in the ante-rooms of the great, the earl 
felt that he was not being forgotten. 

The conspirators, meanwhile, met in various 



160 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

remote places, and passed as husband and wife. 
When in London they remembered that the 
countess was very well known in society, and that 
they must be discreet. No one imagined that 
the handsome Scotsman with the fascinating 
manners was in love with her ladyship. He talked 
so often of Lord Elgin's kindness to him in Paris 
that it seemed only right that he should assist 
Lady Elgin in the business of securing her husband's 
release. 

For a considerable time, however, Napoleon 
would not consent to part with the Earl of Elgin. 
He wished to keep all his important British 
captives in case he lost one or more of his in- 
dispensable generals, or he may have hoped to 
find them useful hostages when peace terms came 
to be discussed. 

His lordship chafed under the delay, but he did 
not ask his wife to rejoin him, feeling that it 
would be selfish of him to expect her to share his 
privations. As always happens in a great war, 
London had the advantage of all the continental 
cities, and Buonaparte's victories did not lessen 
the number of balls and parties, which continued 
almost without cessation while the fate of empires 
was being settled on the battlefields of Europe. 

But just when it seemed certain that Lord Elgin 
would have to wait for the termination of the 
conflict before he could leave Paris, Napoleon 
intimated that he would exchange him for General 
Boyer. The news took the lovers by surprise, 
and disconcerted them, but nothing was to be 



LORD AND LADY ELGIN 161 

gained by candour, and they disguised their 
feelings. 

Lady Elgin wrote in a joyful strain to con- 
gratulate her husband and express her relief, 
and Ferguson penned his good wishes, and 
hinted that if he had not pestered the British 
government the negotiations would not have 
succeeded. Yet he must have known that the 
return of the earl would be merely a preliminary 
to divorce proceedings, for he and Lady Elgin did 
not mean to be separated for ever, and he had 
by now heard from her own lips that she had 
resolved never to live with her husband again. 

It was necessary that they should arrange a 
method of corresponding with each other which 
would not become known to the earl. Her lady- 
ship had in her service an old nurse who had been 
with her and her mother for many years, and she 
now persuaded her to despatch and receive her 
own and Ferguson's love-letters. The latter also 
employed a female servant and letters were en- 
closed in envelopes addressed in an illiterate 
hand to one of her lover's employees. When he 
wrote he followed a similar procedure, and thus 
the secret correspondence was conducted via 
the servants' hall. 

On his return to England the earl duly reported 
at Downing Street, and had to remain in town 
several days as a consequence ; but, once he had 
finished with his official duties, he went with 
Lady Elgin to visit her father at Dirleton. Here 
he had an unpleasant surprise, his wife bluntly 

L 



162 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

informing him that she had decided that they 
must occupy separate bedrooms in future. Her 
only reason was that her husband had become 
repugnant to her since she had fallen in love 
with Ferguson, but the earl did not know that. 
It was impossible, however, for her to hide 
her real feelings from him for long. Trivial in- 
cidents occurred which, taken together, indicated 
that she ceased to care for him. Until his de- 
tention in Paris she had been the most loving of 
wives, and her temper had been angelic. Now 
she was snappish and irritable, and she seemed 
to take a delight in contradicting him. Lord 
Elgin, who was amiable and courteous, tried to 
believe that it was a passing phase, and that, 
when she had had time to forget their misfortunes, 
she would be her old self again. But the position 
became worse instead of better. 

Lady Elgin was exasperated with him because 
his presence prevented her seeing Ferguson. He 
was in her way, and the sight of him annoyed her. 
Nevertheless, she was anxious to keep her in- 
fidelity a secret from him, and she rejected her 
lover's suggestion that they should elope. He 
was willing to many her after the divorce, but 
the countess shrank from exposure and the infamy 
which would attach to her name if it became known 
that she had treacherously plotted to lengthen 
the period of her husband's detention in Paris 
so that she might enjoy the company of his 
treacherous friend. 

It was with reluctance that Ferguson renewed 



LORD AND LADY ELGIN 163 

his acquaintance with Lord Elgin, and he only 
did so when Lady Elgin wrote informing him 
that her husband was commenting on his refusal 
of their invitations. When he did dine with the 
earl and countess he was nervous and awkward, 
and his host once rallied him on his depression. 

" You must be in love, Ferguson," he said in 
the hearing of half a dozen other guests, who 
had reason to smile when they recalled the remark 
when the divorce proceedings were reported. 

" Perhaps you're right," Ferguson replied, 
momentarily regaining his old flippant manner. 
" But one never knows." 

" I hope the lady will prove kind to you," 
said the peer good-humouredly, and the subject 
of conversation was deftly changed by Lady 
Elgin, who had been on tenterhooks during the 
brief colloquy between her husband and her lover. 

Owing to the whole-hearted loyalty of their 
respective servants the correspondence between 
Ferguson and Lady Elgin continued without 
interruption for some months. Every precaution 
was taken to avoid discovery, and the lovers per- 
sonally attended the addressing of the envelopes 
by their confidantes. But one of them was bound 
to grow careless, and the man proved to be the 
culprit. 

Lady Elgin was residingwith her husband at 
his Scottish seat near Dunfermline and Ferguson 
was in London on a visit to a wealthy relative 
when the mistake happened. He had with him 
the elderly woman, who was in his confidence 



164 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

respecting the intrigue he was carrying on, and 
she had served him so faithfully that he felt he 
could trust her implicitly. 

But he forgot that she was almost illiterate 
and that her memory was a poor one, and one 
evening, when pressed for time, he gave her a 
letter for Lady Elgin, and, without waiting to see 
her place it in another envelope and inscribe it 
to her ladyship's maid, he told her to send it in the 
usual way, and then hurried out to keep an ap- 
pointment with a member of the House of Commons 
who was entertaining some friends to dinner. 

The servant was tired and distracted when she 
was given the commission by her employer, and 
she was thinking of something else when she set 
about her task. The result was that she addressed 
the envelope to " Me Laidi Elgin " in large and 
coarse letters, and, placing it with some others, 
forgot all about it. 

She failed to remember that she had never 
before written Lady Elgin's name on the cover, 
and that hitherto it was in the name of " Miss 
Janet Ross " that his love-letters had been re- 
ceived at the Elgin mansion, but she had other 
matters to worry her, and when her employer 
returned in the early hours of the morning she 
was fast asleep in her room, and the next time 
they met the letter was not mentioned. But her 
mistake was to lead to exposure for the lovers. 

The arrival of the post was, of course, an event 
at the residence of the Earl of Elgin, and the 
custom was for the butler to receive the mail and, 



LORD AND LADY ELGIN 165 

having sorted out those for the family, hand 
them to his lordship and personally distribute 
communications for the staff in the servants' hall. 

Lady Elgin had never attempted to intercept 
the letters, secure in the knowledge that her hus- 
band would never see those addressed to Janet, 
which would pass from the butler to her servant, 
who would convey them to her secretly. Con- 
sequently that afternoon when a post-bag was 
delivered containing the oddly addressed com- 
munication from Ferguson, it was included in the 
batch handed over to his lordship, who, in the 
solitude of his library glanced through them at his 
leisure. 

He smiled when he saw that " Me Laidi Elgin." 
It was a novel form of address, and he wondered 
who the writer was. That it could not be anyone 
personally acquainted with his wife he was certain, 
and, believing that it was a begging letter, he 
opened it. Less than a minute afterwards he 
was reading four pages of passionate protestations 
of love for his wife in the well-remembered hand 
of Ferguson. 

Now he realised why his wife had behaved so 
coolly to him since his return from France. Now 
he understood why she insisted on separate beds. 
The letter made it as clear as daylight. He had 
been betrayed by his friend, and the wife who 
had once loved him had deliberately acted in 
concert with his treacherous acquaintance. 

The time had come for him to act, and he did 
so in a way that terrified the guilty woman. He 



166 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

did not talk of forgiveness or waste a minute 
demanding an explanation. He had proofs of 
her guilt in his hand when he entered her room 
and asked her for the other letters she had re- 
ceived from her lover. Lady Elgin went white 
and feebly denied misconduct. 

The incensed man brushed aside her attempts 
to thwart him and began to search the room 
himself, and he did not have far to go before he 
found a score of letters concealed in a drawer in 
a table near the window. They w r ere all from 
her lover, and, taken together, they were a history 
of their intrigue. 

" You had better go to your father," he said, 
sternly. "It is not necessary for me to tell you 
what I intend to do." 

She was too proud to sue for forgiveness, know- 
ing that he would never again receive her as his 
wife, and she immediately left for Dirleton. The 
earl journeyed to London to consult with his 
lawyers and his friends there, and after the divorce 
from bed and board had been obtained he en- 
tered an action for criminal conversation against 
Ferguson, who responded by engaging counsel, 
not to deny misconduct, but to appeal to the jury 
not to award excessive damages. 

The case was tried in the Under-Sheriff's Court, 
where Garrow told the story of his client's wrongs 
and demanded exemplary damages. He argued 
that if the defendant had not deliberately plotted 
to ruin his client's happiness Lady Elgin would 
not have dishonoured her husband, and he de- 



LORD AND LADY ELGIN 167 

clared that the match had been purely a love 
affair and that the earl had suffered acutely by 
the loss of his wife. 

It being necessary in an action of this nature 
to prove that the plaintiff had been a devoted 
husband and that his wife had had no reason for 
wishing to be rid of him Garrow called witnesses 
to speak to the relations between Lord and Lady 
Elgin previous to the latter's infatuation for 
Ferguson. Several officers, including a general, 
and two gentlemen who had been detained in 
Paris at the same time as the earl, spoke of his 
lordship's affection for her ladyship and her pride 
and love for him. It was shown that the plaintiff 
never neglected her and had not contributed in 
any way to her misconduct, either by neglecting 
her or providing her with opportunities for seeing 
Ferguson alone. 

The defendant's counsel, Mr. Topping, delivered 
an eloquent speech on behalf of his client, and 
he implored the jury not to allow themselves to 
be swayed by their natural feelings of indignation 
into ruining the defendant financially. He main- 
tained that there had been no treachery towards 
the Earl of Elgin by Ferguson, and no abuse of 
hospitality. The countess had become enamoured 
of her friend, and Ferguson had realised when too 
late that he could not withdraw from the position 
he found himself in, without abandoning a lady 
who had plainly revealed her passion for him. 

It was a first-rate forensic effort, but the jury 
were not to be persuaded that the loss of a wife 



168 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

of Lady Elgin's rank could be compensated by 
the award of a few thousand pounds, and after a 
very brief consultation amongst themselves their 
foreman gave the finishing touch to a day of 
thrills and sensations by announcing that their 
verdict was that the plaintiff should receive from 
Ferguson the sum of ten thousand pounds. 

The defendant was somewhere in France when 
the verdict was recorded, and Lady Elgin was 
living in strict retirement at her father's Scottish 
seat. Since the parting from her husband she 
had not seen her lover, who had not attempted 
to seek an interview with her. The social world 
had been greatly excited by the lawsuit, and the 
amount of damages created a sensation, but it is 
doubtful if the successful plaintiff recovered a 
shilling of the money. 

His lawyers now prepared a Bill to go before 
the House of Lords, for only their lordships could 
put him in a position to marry again. This was, 
however, merely a formality in the circumstances, 
and the Bill was passed with surprising expedition, 
and, in less than a year after the action for criminal 
conversation, the Earl of Elgin had his desire. 
But it was not until two more years passed that 
he took advantage of the act to marry Elizabeth 
Oswald, a daughter of a gentleman who had been 
a member of Parliament for a Scottish constituency, 
and by her he had children, including the son 
who succeeded him when he died in 1841. 

The divorced countess did not come into the 
limelight again and it does not appear that she 



LORD AND LADY ELGIN 169 

married Ferguson. As she could not help meet- 
ing acquaintances who knew Lord Elgin and his 
second wife, she must have known that his mar- 
riage with Miss Oswald proved a great success 
and that the lady was a fit partner for a nobleman 
of distinguished position and attainments. She 
was very popular both in Scotland and London, 
and she actively assisted the earl in his negotiations 
with the government respecting the purchase of 
the famous marbles which to this day serve to 
keep his memory green. 



CHAPTER XI 

LORD AND LADY CLONCURRY 

Previous to 1858 divorce could not be obtained 
without the expenditure of a small fortune and a 
minimum of three lawsuits extending over two 
years at least. There was first of all an appeal 
to the Ecclesiastical Court ; then an action for 
" criminal conversation " ; and, finally, a Bill 
praying for complete divorce, which had to be 
passed by the House of Lords before the desired 
relief could be obtained. 

It is not too much to say that a large proportion 
of the criminal conversation cases were steeped 
in fraud, and often set in motion to obtain money 
from wealthy victims, and it was this oft-recurring 
scandal that forced the government to reform 
the laws and make one trial take the place of 
three. 

But when Lord Cloncurry, the second holder 
of the title, wished to dissolve his marriage the 
old laws were in force, and, consequently, the 
legal proceedings were spread over four years, 
and if he had not been rich he would have been 
unable to persevere in his efforts to get rid of the 
woman who, while still his wife, had given birth 
to a child by another man. 

170 



LORD AND LADY CLONCURRY 171 

The litigation attracted more than the attention 
usually bestowed by the public on these cases, 
for the peer was that human rarity, an Irish noble- 
man with strong Nationalist sympathies. In his 
salad days he had been twice arrested for coquet- 
ting with suspected rebels, and his own class had 
boycotted him, and that with which he threw 
in his lot had regarded him rather as a curiosity 
than an ally, but Lord Cloncurry had a large 
income, and it eventually procured for him those 
amenities which poorer democrats would have 
found unattainable in the circumstances. He 
lived to eighty, and at that age one has generally 
outlived the opinions and enthusiasms of youth. 
He would be branded as an old-fashioned Tory 
now, for the innovations of yesterday are the 
accepted commonplaces of to-day, and his revolu- 
tionary notions would seem tame in the twentieth 
cent my. 

However, of his sincerity in love and politics 
there could be no doubt, and when the Solicitor- 
General for Ireland told the story of the peer's 
courtship and marriage in the course of the action 
for criminal conversation, which was tried in 
Dublin, the audience felt that Lord Cloncurry 
had been as romantic a lover as he was a strenuous 
champion of Irish independence. 

When he had been in possession of the title 
and estate for three years, Lord Cloncurry accom- 
panied two of his sisters to Nice. He was then 
twenty-nine, and if in political circles he was 
deemed a crank or an impostor, when travelling 



172 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

on the continent he was the great English lord 
who spent money freely and was generous and 
the soul of courtesy and good breeding. 

The young peer had not yet had a serious love 
affair, for he had been so immersed in politics that 
he had had little time for anything else, but the 
days of his bachelorhood were numbered when 
he took up his residence at Nice and was presented 
to the lovely daughter of General Morgan. The 
Solicitor-General described her as very beautiful 
and fascinating, and he does not seem to have 
exaggerated. Miss Elizabeth Morgan was lively 
and witty, and, lacking the premature solemnity 
of the Irishman, she attracted him because she 
was his opposite. 

They were soon friends, and, within a week, 
lovers, and her father approved her choice at 
once, for if Lord Cloncurry's opinions were fan- 
tastically absurd, there could be nothing ridiculous 
or disreputable about a peerage and thirty 
thousand a year. When he was asked for his 
consent to the marriage he did not keep them in 
suspense. The old soldier, however, had a keen 
sense of the shekels, and he declined to permit 
the ceremony to take place until Lord Cloncurry 
had settled a thousand a year on his daughter. 

" I am not returning to Ireland for six 
months," said Cloncurry, who was upset by the 
decision, " and I cannot arrange the settlement 
here." 

" Send a trusted messenger for the necessary 
papers," the general advised, bluntly. " We need 



LORD AND LADY CLONCURRY 173 

not be in a hurry. My daughter can wait, and 
so can you." 

The impatient lover had no retort to this, and 
it was tacitly agreed that the engagement should 
last for some months. Lord Cloncurry had a 
great deal to do on behalf of his sisters, both of 
whom were delicate, but he was constantly in 
Miss Morgan's society, and he became so infatuated 
that he urged her to marry him at once. He was 
anxious to make her his wife, settlement or no 
settlement, but General Morgan resolutely op- 
posed him, and both parties, when they left Nice 
for Rome, were still divided on the subject. 

The soldier's daughter and her lover were of 
one mind, but the general and Cloncurry's sisters 
opposed them. The latter were, perhaps excus- 
ably, not enthusiastic at the prospect of another 
woman monopolising their brother, and, although 
they must have known that this marriage was 
inevitable, they sided with the general because 
it was in their interests that his lordship should 
remain a bachelor. 

At Rome, however, the discussion was resumed, 
and eventually General Morgan consented to the 
marriage being celebrated, despite the impossibility 
of arranging the monetary side of it. Lord 
Cloncurry pledged his word that he would give his 
bride a thousand a year, and her father thereupon 
bestowed a dowry of five thousand pounds on her. 

The social importance of the contracting parties 
enabled them to secure the services of the English 
chaplain to a British princess who was residing 



174 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

in Rome, and, accordingly, the ceremony was 
performed in the palace of the princess, and Lord 
and Lady Cloncurry appeared destined " to live 
happily every afterwards." 

The succeeding couple of years were spent in 
Italy, the happy pair preferring to remain abroad 
until Europe was more settled, and in that time two 
children were born to them. They entertained 
lavishly and were the leaders of the English colony 
in Rome, and the devotion of Cloncurry to his 
wife, and her affection for him, were very noticeable. 

According to his counsel at the trial, the peer 
had been a perfect husband, and Lady Cloncurry 
had been equally devoted to him until what 
Sergeant Buzfuz would have termed " a serpent 
in the guise of a man " appeared on the scene 
to destroy their happiness. 

When Lord and Lady Cloncurry found it desir- 
able to return home, the young wife assumed the 
position of mistress of Lyons, the magnificent 
residence near Dublin on which her husband had 
spent nearly two hundred thousand pounds. In 
accordance with his promise to her father, the 
settlement was immediately executed, and, 
monetary matters having been amicably arranged, 
the Cloncurrys had little else to do but to look 
after their young children and enjoy the privileges 
of their wealth and rank. But Lady Cloncurry 
thought that Ireland was extremely dull after 
Rome and Nice, and she did not share her hus- 
band's passion for improving his mansion and 
estate. 



LORD AWD LADY CONCURRY 175 

The change from continental life to the pro- 
vincialisms of an obscure Irish village created a 
longing for excitement, and she was in the mood 
for an intrigue when Sir John Piers called. As 
his lordship was not at home, her ladyship received 
him alone, and he made a great impression on her 
by his pose as a man of the world and a votary 
of pleasure. He had travelled extensively on 
the continent, knew everybody worth knowing, 
and he had adventures to relate which, if not 
exactly true, nevertheless suggested that they 
had a substratum of truth. 

He was, as she expressed it, a delightful man, 
and her husband was delighted when he heard 
that she and Piers were friends, for he had been at 
school with the baronet, and they had been inti- 
mates for many years. Sir John Piers was, in 
fact, indebted to Lord Cloncurry for a large sum, 
and he hastened to get on good terms with her 
ladyship in order to have a friend at court should 
the question of repayment ever come up for 
discussion. That was why he had exerted himself 
to fascinate her, never imagining that she would 
fall in love with him. 

The baronet's finances were in a chaotic con- 
dition, for ever since he had come of age he had 
lived at the rate of four times his income. He 
had taken advantage of the generous nature of 
his former school-fellow to borrow thousands 
of pounds from him, and when his position was 
most critical and a large sum was necessary to 
save him from arrest and disgrace, Lord Cloncurry 



176 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

had advanced it and had facilitated his escape 
to the continent. He was, therefore, under many 
obligations to the peer, but he forgot that when 
it became evident that Lady Cloncurry was 
infatuated with him. 

There was very little peace for Lord Cloncurry 
after his return to Ireland, although for a short time 
he remained in ignorance of his wife's unfaithful- 
ness. He had a great deal to do when they first 
took up their residence at their principal seat, 
and he was so busy with the management of his 
property that Lady Cloncurry 's presentation at 
the viceregal court in Dublin had to be postponed. 

She encouraged further delay, finding it easy 
to persuade him not to be in a hurry on her account 
as he wished to complete the improvements he 
had ordered at Lyons, his Irish residence, before 
going to court, and he had little time to mix in 
local society. This devotion to business gave 
Lady Cloncurry daily opportunities of receiving 
Sir John Piers, and she spent hours in his company 
chatting of mutual friends and places abroad 
which they had grown to like. 

The baronet had never been a lover ol travelling, 
but his creditors had, by their efforts to extract 
money from him, often driven him to the con- 
tinent, and for several years he had been com- 
pelled to live out of his native land. He did not 
tell Lady Cloncurry this, and he made a virtue 
out of his necessities, flattered and cajoled her, 
praised her skilfully, and, never anticipating 
danger, readily responded to any hints of affection 



LORD AND LADY CLONCURRY 177 

she was pleased to give him. Thus, before she 
had been in Ireland six months, she had a lover, 
and even the prospect of losing her children, 
to say nothing of reputation, husband, and home, 
could not curb her passion for the needy rogue 
who was living on the bounty of her husband. 

Lord Cloncurry never suspected anything, and 
he approved of the friendship between his wife 
and Piers, who owed him so much that he could 
not link his name with ingratitude. The secret 
lovers dare not commit themselves in his house 
where they were surrounded by old and attached 
servants of the peer, but circumstances arose 
which provided them with the opportunity they 
desired, and when it came they took full advantage 
of it. 

His lordship was reputed to dislike court cere- 
monies, and he certainly disapproved of the union 
between Great Britain and Ireland, but when he 
was married and in his native country again he 
was anxious as his wife that she should make 
her bow to the king's representative. Various 
matters caused delay, but when they had been 
disposed of he renewed the subject, and a house 
having been engaged in Dublin they went to that 
city, leaving behind them one of their children 
who was not well. 

Ireland's capital, which had recently been shorn 
of its parliament, was not then at its best. It 
wore the air of a deserted city, and the great 
houses were on the way to being turned into 
lodging-houses. There was now no necessity for 

M 



178 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

peers to have residences there, and they preferred 
London or their country seats, and Lady Cloncurry 
was disappointed, for she had expected something 
quite different. 

However, there was Sir John Piers to comfort 
her, and Lord Cloncurry, without waiting for her 
to suggest it, invited the baronet to stay with 
them until the festivities of the imitation court 
were concluded. 

The infatuated woman was now in a position 
of freedom and irresponsibility. Her husband's 
old servants were at Lyons, and it was easy enough 
to dispose of the few attendants they had brought 
with them, and who were desirous of seeing the 
sights of the capital. But it was not possible 
to banish his lordship so easily, and she was trying 
to discover a way of doing it without making him 
suspicious when he solved the problem for her. 

" I can't bear to think baby is all alone at 
Lyons," he said, three days after their arrival in 
Dublin, " I'll go back and see her as I won't be 
wanted here until Friday." 

Lady Cloncurry praised him for his forethought 
and saw him off, but his carriage was hardly out 
of sight when she was rejoicing with Piers at 
having disposed of him. 

" That night," said the Solicitor-General, who 
conducted the case on behalf of Lord Cloncurry, 
" the defendant and Lady Cloncurry committed 
adultery, and on every occasion my client was 
with his ailing child at Lyons the}' repeated the 
offence." 



LORD AND LADY CLONCURRY 179 

That statement was denied but not disproved 
by counsel who represented Sir John Piers, and 
it was fully confirmed when the erring woman 
confessed everything to her husband. But that 
was not to happen for a short while yet, for 
throughout their stay in Dublin Lord Cloncurry 
was wholly unconscious that his wife loved an- 
other man, and at the last dinner party they gave 
in the city the baronet occupied a place of honour 
at the table and was one of the j oiliest persons 
present, although aware that if he ever incurred 
his host's enmity his lordship could ruin him by 
simply claiming payment of the money he had 
advanced. 

From Dublin they returned to Lyons, which 
was less than seven miles from the home of the 
baronet. The mansion of the Cloncurrys was 
now complete, and it was no idle boast when the 
peer claimed that it was the finest private residence 
in Ireland. It was a veritable museum of treasures 
and, proud of his possessions and deeply attached 
to his wife, he determined to fill his house with 
guests and do all he could to prevent Lady Clon- 
curry suffering from dullness or depression. 

A few choice friends were staying at Lyons 
when the secret of his wife's guilty intrigue was 
revealed to him. One evening he asked her to 
accompany him on a walk through the grounds, 
but she excused herself with the plea that she 
was indisposed. He thereupon went on to the 
lawn in front of the house with Colonel and Mrs. 
Burton, his brother-in-law and sister. 



180 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

Now, he had informed Lady Cloncurry that 
they would remain there until dinner-time, but 
they changed their minds, and proceeded to the 
rear of the house, and they were turning the 
corner when, to their astonishment, they saw 
her ladyship arm-in-arm with Sir John Piers, 
both laughing and behaving in the most familiar 
manner. The peer did not remonstrate or show 
any disfavour, for lie did not care to make a 
scene, and when he retired to his bedroom late 
that night his wife was asleep, and he did not 
wake her. 

At four o'clock in the morning, however, he 
discovered that she was wide awake, and he there- 
upon reproached her with having foolishfy risked 
her reputation. He spoke as gently as he could, 
but his obvious desire not to hurt her more than 
was necessary moved her. 

" I'm not worthy of you," she cried, bursting 
into tears. " Sir John Piers is an infamous 
wretch, and he is determined on my ruin. For 
God's sake, let me never see him again." 

On hearing this, he immediately dressed and 
went in search of the baronet, and he came on him 
shooting in a distant part of the demesne. Now, 
Lord Cloncurry was popularly supposed to be a 
fire-eater, but he was in no mood for bloodshed 
when he confronted Piers, and, although excited 
and overwrought, he was tactful enough to master 
his emotions and obtain Sir John's gun by pre- 
tending that he saw a rabbit which he wished 
to shoot. Once he possessed the weapon, how- 



LORD AND LADY CLONCURRY 181 

ever, he disclosed the nature of his business, but 
without passion or vituperation. 

" Piers, don't be angry with me," he said with 
astonishing humility. " For God's sake, don't 
drive Lady Cloncurry to infamy. Quit this place ; 
go, and God bless you." 

Piers, frightened and dismayed, yet puzzled 
by the oddly apologetic tone of the friend he had 
betrayed, mumbled denials previous to beating a 
retreat. When he was in Dublin he wrote twice 
to Cloncurry asserting his innocence, and, these 
letters being ignored, sent a third suggesting a duel. 

Meanwhile, Lord Cloncurry had returned to 
his wife's side and had informed her that she 
would not be troubled by Sir John Piers again. 
He was proceeding to protest his love for her 
and to apologise for having been the means of 
causing her any pain when, overcome by his 
chivalrous and generous demeanour, she threw 
herself at his feet, and confessed that she had been 
guilty of misconduct with the baronet. 

The shock killed his love for her on the spot, 
and, separating from her at once, he allowed her 
an adequate sum to maintain her, and instituted 
legal proceedings. Piers' letters to Lord Clon- 
curry were handed over to his lordship's legal 
advisers, and a fourth addressed to Lady Clon- 
curry was intercepted by one of her servants 
and delivered to the peer. It proved to be a 
passionate love letter in which Lady Cloncurry 
was styled " My beloved Eliza," and Lord Clon- 
curry was derided as a poor, tame wretch. In a 



182 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

postscript the writer asked if her husband knew 
everything, or if he was merely suspicious, and 
he wound up by offering to marry her ladyship 
when she was free to accept his proposal. Of 
course, this was complete corroboration of Lady 
Cloncurry's confession, and Piers was well ad- 
vised to keep out of Ireland when the action was 
tried in Dublin. 

Sir John, however, was represented b}' counsel 
who fought valiantly for him. The Solicitor- 
General's speech for the plaintiff was answered by 
a two hours' oration by Mr. Burrows, but it was 
mainly a plea for mitigation of damages. Con- 
sidering that the baronet was a penniless bankrupt 
Mr. Burrows' anxiety was superfluous. Lord 
Cloncurry wanted to secure a verdict that would 
make the public realise the extent of his loss, 
and he had his wish, for the jury awarded him 
£20,000. It might as well has been as many 
millions, for the defendant could not pay a farthing. 

This was only a preliminary step to a divorce, 
and it was not until some years later that the 
last stage was reached, and a Bill was passed by 
the House of Lords to enable Lord Cloncurry to 
marry again. Before he obtained his freedom 
he had met a lady whom he decided to make his 
wife, and the year the Lords pronounced judg- 
ment in his favour he married the Hon. Mrs. 
Leeson, a widow with children, and the daughter 
of a .Scottish gentleman. Their union proved a 
very successful one, and the eldest son by it 
eventually succeeded his father in the peerage. 



LORD AND LADY CLONCURRY 183 

Lord Cloncurry survived his domestic troubles 
by forty-two years, dying in 1853 at the age of 
eighty. He led a strenuous existence, and had 
many controversies with the government, but 
he dropped his separatist ideas in 1831, when he 
was created a peer of the United Kingdom, for 
the nobleman who had declined to sign an address 
to George IV. had by then become one of the 
strongest adherents of the royal family. 

Very little was heard of the divorced Lady 
Cloncurry, her ladyship living in retirement until 
her death. 

The end of Sir John Piers was tragic. Com- 
pelled to retire from England by his inability to 
pay the damages given against him in the action 
for crim. con. he spent a short time on the con- 
tinent before going to the Isle of Man, where he 
lived in lodgings under an assumed name. But 
even in misfortune his love of intrigue proved 
irresistible and he formed a liaison with the daugh- 
ter of a clergyman. It lasted until the father, 
hearing of her disgrace, committed suicide by 
shooting himself, for when the distracted woman 
brought the news to the baronet he was overcome 
by remorse and took his own life. This was in 
August, 1808. 



CHAPTER XII 

LORD WILLIAM LENNOX AND HIS WIFE 

Mary Anne Paton, one of the greatest actresses 
and singers of her generation, scored most of her 
theatrical triumphs in London, where she was a 
popular favourite, but her life-story is inextricably 
bound up with the city of Edinburgh, for she 
was born, married, and divorced in the Scottish 
capital. 

Her native place could never have been pro- 
ductive of happy memories, and despite her 
cleverness she never acquired the sense of enjoy- 
ment, and her moody, irritable, restless and 
neurotic temperament led her into more than 
one dramatic adventure in which she proved 
that she was as good an actress off the stage as 
on it. 

Her father, a schoolmaster in Edinburgh, was 
not a child-lover, but when he discovered that 
his daughter was something of a prodigy he seems 
to have determined to train her into an Infant 
Phenomenon, not forgetting that there was 
" money in the business." George Paton and his 
wife, who was a Crawford, of Cameron Bank, 
were both musical, and Mary, the first of their 

184 



LORD W. LENNOX AND HIS WIFE 185 

family, was immediately consigned to a musical 
career. 

At six a rumour was industriously circulated 
that she had composed several pieces, and at eight 
she appeared on the concert platform in the triple 
character of vocalist, harpist, and pianist. Fame 
and fortune would have been hers if she had not 
been so juvenile a phenomenon, but her health 
was affected by the strain and she retired into 
private life again, to remain there until 1820 
when she was seen in the role of actress, and she 
became a celebrity in 1822, when she scored a 
brilliant success at her London debut. 

The careful and thorough training bore fruit, 
and Paton was fully rewarded for his trouble. 
His daughter was a "star," and managers com- 
peted for her services. The wily Scot, hard- 
headed and shrewd, looked carefully after the 
" siller," and his dragon-like guardianship of his 
money-maker would have done credit to an ultra- 
Grundyfied Mrs. Grundy. Paton, who chose her 
friends for her, regarded all bachelors as possible 
wooers. Lavish with his flattery and almost 
orientally deferential where a wealthy nobleman 
was concerned, he was the stern moralist and 
heavy father when younger sons and penniless 
adventurers attempted to make the acquaintance 
of his famous daughter. 

No one, however, was deceived by his pose of 
fond parent. Everybody knew that Paton's real 
reason for his elaborate watchfulness was a resolve 
to marry Mary to a man who could afford to com- 



186 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

pensate him for the loss of her salary and re- 
imburse him for the money he had spent on her 
education and training. 

Amongst those who were fascinated by her 
was a young doctor of the name of Blood. Tall 
and handsome, a ready conversationalist and 
an adept in the art of pleasing women, he found 
in his passion for acting an opportunity to become 
friendly with Mary Paton. 

An engagement at the Haymarket Theatre, 
where she was playing, led to a very close friend- 
ship, and, while George Paton was deciding on 
the merits of the men of good family who belonged 
to his circle of friends, the actor-doctor was making 
love to the beauty with the dark eyes and the 
lovely complexion. 

Mary was due to appear at the Covent Garden 
Theatre after she had finished at the Haymarket, 
but she took the trouble to get Blood a part in the 
new piece at the former theatre before she entered 
it. This evidence of her goodwill inspired Blood 
to propose to her, and when she accepted him 
they agreed it was time to take her father into 
their confidence. 

The ex-schoolmaster had a terrible shock. The 
success of all his schemes depended on his daughter 
marrying a wealthy man, and his bitter dis- 
appointment found an outlet in frantic denuncia- 
tion of the actor. He immediately informed 
the manager of the Covent Garden Theatre that 
if Blood were allowed access to Mary he would 
take her away and they could please them- 



LORD W. LENNOX AND HIS WIFE 187 

selves about suing him for breach of contract or 
not. 

When Blood was informed he instantly gave up 
his engagement in order that the lady might 
not be inconvenienced or suffer pecuniary loss 
on his account. His act of self-sacrifice had, of 
course, the effect of endearing him to her more 
than ever, and Mary, who could revel in a. real 
love-romance, met her lover by stealth, and finally 
consented to marry him on a certain day. But 
Paton heard of their plans and set to work to 
influence his daughter against Blood. 

Day and night he pestered her, criticising the 
young doctor, inventing lies about him, and ex- 
citing her by relating what such and such a famous 
peer had said of her. He was anxious that she 
should marry a nobleman, and he laboured the 
point that Blood would merely drag her down 
and that family cares would soon rob her of her 
beauty and her ability. He reminded her that 
there were plenty of other women waiting to 
succeed her on the boards and that when she was 
the wife of a country doctor they would be the 
favourites of London. 

The arguments were weak and often ridiculous, 
but Mary Paton, who was addicted to dramatic 
and theatrical emotions, finally gave in. Her 
decision presented her with the leading part in a 
very sentimental drama, and she arranged for 
the " curtain " on the very day fixed for her 
wedding. 

Blood was preparing to drive to the church 



188 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

when he received a letter from her, accompanied 
by a parcel. The former announced that she 
had changed her mind and the latter contained 
all the presents he had ever given her. The 
doctor instantly rushed off to her house, but was 
refused admission, and, having persuaded himself 
by a re-perusal of her letter that she had not been 
coerced into jilting him, he did not attempt to 
see her again. 

A few years later he started to practise in Bath 
and he was a happy husband and father when 
Mary Paton's matrimonial affairs brought unto 
her unhappy notoriety. 

It is certain, however, that Mary never forgot 
him and that Blood was the only man she ever 
loved. Her father alone knew how she suffered 
by the parting, but he kept her secluded and 
she was too able an actress to betray herself. 
The public saw nothing to indicate that she had 
been the chief figure in an affair which was to 
affect her for the rest of her life ; she sang and 
acted as brilliantly as ever ; her circle of admirers 
grew, and George Paton congratulated himself on 
having saved her from an act of crazy folly. 

He was doubfy pleased because she was in such 
a state of mind now that she did not care what 
happened to her. " I'll marry anyone you like," 
seems to have been her attitude once Blood was 
out of the running for her hand. 

Paton took advantage of her pliabilitj^ to urge 
the claims of a nobleman of twenty-five named 
Lord William Lennox. He was a younger son 



LORD W. LENNOX AND HIS WIFE 189 

of the fourth Duke of Richmond, and he was well 
known in society and in royal circles. His rank 
was, however, his only asset, for he had no 
means, and he was heavily in debt. 

It may have been that Paton was not aware 
that the young prig was an unscrupulous cad — 
would-be husbands do not reveal their true char- 
acters even when their motives are mercenary — 
for Lord William Lennox could talk familiarly 
of his friends in high places, and one had only 
to read the fashionable papers to find confirma- 
tion of his statements. His father had held some 
of the highest positions in the service of the crown, 
and thus when the youthful nobleman made 
overtures to Mary, the ex-schoolmaster encouraged 
him. Perhaps at the back of his mind was a 
notion that Lord William's family would " behave 
handsomely " and help with settlements, but, 
whatever the reason, Paton became the champion 
of Lennox, and with such a friend victory was 
alwaj^s a certainty. 

The actress, however, could see nothing at- 
tractive about the society of a man whose chief 
hobbies were women and horses. Giggling des- 
criptions of his wagers bored her, and his few 
attempts to pose as an authority on the arts 
would have been funny if they had not been quite 
so crude. When a few weeks after her broken 
engagement she went to Edinburgh with her 
ever-watchful parent she had not treated seriously 
Lennox's proposals of marriage. 

Now, had she proved complacent he would not 



igo SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

have valued her at all, but, being denied, he 
became infatuated, and followed her to Sctoland. 
Paton, of course, provided him with their address 
and arranged a suitable time for him to call at 
their lodgings, and, having set his heart on the 
marriage, he grew more insistent, boldly expressed 
his wish to Mary that she should accept Lord 
William, and when she declared her unwilling- 
ness for a public ceremon}? reminded her that in 
Scotland they could be married anywhere pro- 
vided there was a witness present to hear their 
simple acceptance of each other as husband and 
wife. 

It was this fact that overcame her scruples. 
The girl believed that she would have to marry 
someone eventually and she decided that she 
might as well be Lady William Lennox as any- 
body else. She could never love him, but she 
could say the same of all the men in the world 
with the exception of Blood. Then Lord William 
Lennox desired the marriage to be kept a secret 
for a year or two, and this appealed strongly to 
her, for she wished to continue on the stage and 
she did not want the public to know that she 
had saddled herself with a husband. 

Thus the simplicity of the Scottish law on the 
subject tempted her to yield to Paton 's wishes, 
and she and Lennox were married privately on 
May 7th, 1824, and, although news of it leaked 
out immediately, few believed it, and Lord 
William's family, not crediting it, did not attempt 
to investigate. Even when Lord and Lady William 



LORD W. LENNOX AND HIS WIFE 191 

Lennox took up their abode together the 
papers did not hesitate to proclaim that she 
was his mistress and not his wife, and that was 
the general opinion until an enterprising writer 
professed to be able to assure his readers that 
the actress was indeed Lord William's wife, 
the duke's son having married her because — 
so the scribe recorded — he was hard-up and had 
to find someone to keep him. 

This was, indeed, the truth stated with brutal 
candour, and Lennox, never worried by questions 
of honour, did not openly resent the contumely 
in which he was held, finding relief for his feelings 
by ill-treating his wife, whose earnings he spent 
on himself and on other women, and countered 
her remonstrances with cruelty. George Paton 
was banished by his ungrateful son-in-law, who 
drove him back to Scotland with curses and did 
his best to prevent Mary sending him any 
money. The marriage was, certainly, a bad 
investment for the worldly-minded ex-school- 
master, who was severely punished for his 
mercenary motives. 

Lady William Lennox at first rather enjoyed 
the part of tragedy queen she found herself cast 
for by the failure of her loveless marriage. She 
had her happy moments when she was acting, 
and there were periods of relief when Lord William 
was too busy elsewhere with his horses and his 
disreputable friends to have the time to bother 
about her. She knew she was an object of curi- 
osity and sympathy wherever she went, and 



192 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

enterprising managers made profit out of her 
misfortune, and legends accumulated around her 
always attractive and unique personality, and 
she liked to believe that they were true. 

But the situation could not last many years. 
The actress was too human to be able to endure 
active cruelty for long. The loss of her con- 
siderable earnings scarcely affected her, but the 
brutalities of her husband did, and her health 
suffered. There were occasions when she had 
to hire an ex-pugilist to protect her from Lord 
William outside the stage door, for he would some- 
times come from his club in an intoxicated con- 
dition and, when she emerged from the theatre, 
assault her. Thus she paid dearly for her blunder, 
and she had greater reason than ever to wish 
that she had kept that engagement to marry 
Blood at the church in the West End. 

The situation quickly became ripe for a tragedy 
— or comedy. Mary did not seek consolation 
in the arms of another man simply because there 
was none she met who appealed to her, but a lover 
was bound to appear, and when he did she was 
as surprised as anyone else. The actress was 
not a flirt, and all her interests were centred in 
her profession. Many men attempted to gain 
her friendship, but she tactfully repulsed them. 
It was not that she was a prude. Lady William 
Lennox was too bored with life to care for an 
intrigue. 

In the early part of 1831 the company, in which 
she was playing the lead, received an addition to 



LORD W. LENNOX AND HIS WIFE 193 

its ranks in the person of a tenor who, although 
a member of a Yorkshire county family, appeared 
on the stage under his own name, which was 
Joseph Wood. He had a fine voice and he was 
a hard worker, and up to the time of meeting 
Mary Paton the only woman for whom he cared 
was his mother, for whom he provided. W T ood, 
of course, occupied an inferior position to Mary, 
but she took immediate notice of him, and his 
gentlemanly manners and chivalrous attitude to- 
wards her aroused her warm sympathy, and very 
soon she was confiding her troubles in him. 

He had heard, of course, that Lord and Lady 
William Lennox were on the worst of terms and 
he had been amazed that the son of a duke should 
have been content to let his wife keep him. The 
scandalous stories that were being told about 
Lennox in the clubs and in the greenrooms implied 
that the fellow was a loathsome cad, and Wood 
was astounded that Lord William did nothing 
to vindicate his character by an appeal to the 
law. 

When he was the friend of Lady William the 
tenor's astonishment increased, for he could not 
understand how any man could treat brutally 
a creature of such charm, refinement, and grace. 
It may be that he told the actress this, for their 
friendship speedily became the talk of the theatre, 
but Wood took precautions to ensure that her 
fair name was not tarnished by his conduct. 
Whenever he escorted her home after the theatre 
his mother accompanied them, and when Lady 

N 



194 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

William entered their house it was Mrs. Wood 
who received her. 

When analysed, however, it will be admitted 
that all these elaborate experiments in correct 
behaviour were only a strong evidence of Wood's 
love for Lady William and her consciousness of 
the fact. Both most likely realised that there 
was no need for them to be precipitate and that 
Lord William Lennox would in due course drive 
his wife to seek permanent shelter in Wood's home. 
The nobleman's requirements were by now far 
beyond Mary's earning powers, and his consequent 
dissatisfaction was vented in greater cruelty, 
and her position was quite impossible. 

The inevitable happened when, stung by his 
reproaches and humiliated by his conduct, she 
fled from his house and asked Mrs. Wood to 
protect her. That lady was anxious that her 
son should marry the actress, and she now worked 
solely in his interests and defied Lennox when he 
called to demand the return of his wife. Joseph 
Wood was present at the second interview with 
the nobleman, which was not so very stormy, 
because Lennox was seldom pugnacious in the 
presence of a man his physical superior. 

" You were married in Scotland," said Wood 
bluntly, " and as your wife is determined not 
to go back to }^ou I would advise you to get your 
marriage annulled in Scotland. Should you not 
care for that plan, you might allow her to divorce 
you, but whatever happens, I am determined 
to marry her the moment she is free." 



LORD W. LENNOX AND HIS WIFE 195 

Lennox was in high dudgeon. He hated Mary, 
but she had been a certain and regular source 
of income, and, as she was now at her best and 
commanded a large salary, he informed the tenor 
that he would not give her up. Wood advised 
him to think it over, and the nobleman did so, 
and, on reflection, agreed that it would be better 
to sever the marriage tie. 

An action was accordingly entered at the Court 
of Session in Edinburgh and eminent counsel 
retained on behalf of Lord William Lennox. So 
anxious was Lady William to get rid of him that 
it was said at the time that it was her money that 
paid the legal costs although even when the hus- 
band is the complainant and succeeds the rule is 
that he must foot the bill. 

Lady William did not defend the action, and 
the pursuer's counsel having briefly told the story 
of his client's unfortunate marriage — omitting 
naturally all the details that would have reflected 
on the Duke of Richmond's son — the divorce 
was granted, and Mary Paton was entitled to 
marry the man who had been her best friend. 

The proceedings in the Court of Session attracted 
considerable attention. Lord William could not 
charge his wife with misconduct, greatly to his 
chagrin, and it was only because the Scottish 
marriage laws were about a hundred years ahead 
of the English that he was able to secure a divorce 
for desertion. What interested the public most, 
however, were the revelations of the life of a 
nobleman and his actress- wife, and the fame and 



196 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

talents of the Edinburgh girl who had married 
into the peerage got a great advertisement by 
means of the law case. 

Immediately the decree was pronounced Lady 
William Lennox became Mrs. Joseph Wood, and 
an era of happiness began for her. She and her 
husband appeared together in London and the 
provinces and prospered exceedingly, and when a 
son was born to them and Wood inherited an 
estate in Yorkshire, there appeared to be nothing 
left for them to desire. 

But a lengthy tour in America had a bad effect 
on her nerves, and when she reappeared in England 
she was almost a neurotic wreck. Wood, who was 
calmness itself, endeavoured in vain to soothe 
her. Mary declared that she must get away 
from the world or she would go mad. Even her 
child's welfare did not interest her. She suffered 
from boredom, hallucinations, and fits of hysteria. 
Nothing pleased her, and human society became 
unbearable. 

One da}? her husband returned home to hear 
that she had gone to a convent twenty miles away. 
His first impulse was to follow her ; his second 
to leave things as they were, and time justified 
his " second thoughts." He guessed that convent 
life would not possess an endurable attraction 
for a woman who had from her early years been 
accustomed to the homage and admiration of 
crowds. He believed that the fascination of the 
footlights would draw her back into the world, 
and that she would not be able to forget that 



LORD W. LENNOX AND HIS WIFE 197 

he had a baby boy who required her care and 
attention. 

He had, however, to spend a difficult and un- 
easy twelve months without her society before 
his hopes were fulfilled, but when she re-entered 
their home he did not complain or reproach her, 
and they resumed their life together at the point 
it had been temporarily interrupted. 

For a year or two they pursued their profession 
and then they went to live on his estate in York- 
shire. Lord William Lennox was now producing 
novels and books of reminiscences, all of which 
were derided by the critics and bought by those 
who thought that a nobleman must have some- 
thing of importance to say. Never once, how- 
ever, did he refer to his actress-wife, and he 
married twice after Mary became Mrs. Joseph 
Wood. The wife he had divorced was banished 
from his life because she reminded him of the days 
when he had been anything but an ornament to 
society. 

It is to be hoped that the second and third wives 
had better luck, and probably they had, because 
he was less prone to mischief as a middle-aged 
and an old man. Mary bore him no ill-will, as 
she showed when his name was mentioned in her 
presence. She could regard him as with complete 
detachment because her second marriage was 
so complete a success. 

In 1864 she died at the age of sixty-two, and it 
was her obituary notices that enlightened the 
public that she had once been Lady William 



198 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

Lennox. Lord William outlived her by seven- 
teen years, and before he expired in 1881 he had 
survived by exactly half a century the divorce 
suit he had instituted in Scotland to rid himself 
of the woman who had declined to keep him in 
idleness and dissipation. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE TALBOT CONSPIRACY 

When John Talbot, a young Irishman of ancient 
family and considerable means, made the ac- 
quaintance of Mary Anne M'Causland he was an 
officer in the army, and she was one of the beauti- 
ful daughters of a wealthy gentleman who lived 
in Leicestershire. 

Her family was not displeased when he showed a 
preference for her society, for he appeared to be 
generous and high-minded, and, knowing that 
his means were ample, they could not suspect 
that her fortune, which amounted to a few 
thousand pounds, could be any attraction. By 
means of lavish presents and the exercise of his 
powers of flattery and cajolery, Talbot succeeded 
in gaining the affections of the girl, who, with 
the approval of her parents, accepted him when 
he proposed. 

The engagement was commendably brief, and 
no young people could have been so happy as 
these two were. John Talbot acted as though 
nothing was too good for his fiancee, and, her 
love for him growing, there was no reason to fear 
that their marriage would prove a failure. When 

199 



200 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

she involuntarily expressed regret at having to 
leave England for Ireland, where she would be 
surrounded by strangers, Talbot immediately 
promised to do all he could to make her environ- 
ment less foreign, and to prove his sincerity he 
engaged three English servants to wait on him 
and his bride. 

They were expensive additions to his house- 
hold staff, but he dcelared that he did not mind 
what it cost him to please her, and it was in that 
spirit that he married her and took her to his 
Irish home. 

About ten months after the marriage — the date 
of which was January, 1845 — a daughter was 
born, and, although Talbot had hoped for a son, 
he did not then display any disappointment at 
the sex of the child. The reason was that he 
owned absolutely all his property and could 
bequeath it to his daughter if he pleased, and by 
now his wife had reason to know that he had every 
intention of leaving a large estate. For, John 
Talbot courting the English beauty had been one 
person, and John Talbot, the husband of Mary 
Anne M'Causland, was quite a different character. 

The honeymoon had scarcely ended when she 
discovered that he was by nature the very per- 
sonification of meanness. He took the first oppor- 
tunity to dismiss the expensive English servants, 
and it was not easy to induce him to part with 
sufficient money to provide his wife with new 
clothes. Mrs. Talbot, accustomed to a luxurious 
home and generous parents, was startled at the 



THE TALBOT CONSPIRACY 201 

change in him, but she would not make trouble, 
and, although she suffered acutely because of his 
miserly habits, she found consolation in her love 
for her child. It was not unusual for her to go 
for weeks without any money, and once, when 
refused a small sum by Talbot, she had to borrow 
it from one of the servants. The amount was 
only three shillings and sixpence, yet it took 
her nine weeks to repay it by instalments. 

But John Talbot's passion for money was to 
have a more serious result than she or anyone 
else could have foreseen. His wife could endure 
the petty annoyances she was subjected to by 
his miserliness, for she alwa}^ had the comforting 
society of her daughter, and her husband was 
never actively cruel to her. She was always busy 
in the house, for her servants were not efficient, 
and every morning it was her custom to inspect 
the bedrooms to see that they were kept clean. 
She did this at Talbot's request, and she never 
carried out the inspection unless accompanied 
by her child. 

The Talbot household., however, reflected the 
characteristics of the master of the mansion. It 
was tawdry, dirty, and uncomfortable. Food 
was plentiful enough because of the home farm, 
but it was served by untidy servants amid squalid 
surroundings. This met with Talbot's approval, 
because he considered that cleanliness cost money, 
and that it was a luxury he could not afford. 

Such was the position when an event happened 
which altered John Talbot's outlook on life. In 



202 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

the summer of 185 1 he inherited from his uncle 
the Mount Talbot estates in Roscommon, a very 
valuable property which, added to what he already 
possessed, made him exceedingly rich. 

Elated by this addition to his wealth he removed 
with his family and servants to the historic resi- 
dence, Mount Talbot, and for a few days forgot 
his " principles of economy " and spent several 
pounds, but before he was a fortnight in his new 
house he issued orders for a strict supervision 
of expenses, and Mrs. Talbot accordingly had 
duties assigned to her which ought to have been 
performed by an upper servant. However, she 
submitted quietly. Her daughter was nearly six, 
and she was happy to be allowed to teach her 
and make her worthy of the splendid inheritance 
that would be hers one day. 

When they had settled down in their new quar- 
ters Talbot sent for the family lawyer and dis- 
cussed with him his position as owner of the 
Mount Talbot estate. He wished to draw up a 
new will, and he was pompously giving directions 
as to the disposal of the property in the event of 
his death when his solicitor politely drew his 
attention to the fact that the estate was strictly 
entailed in the male line, and that as John Talbot 
had no son he could not bequeath it to anyone, 
even his own daughter. 

The news was a severe shock to the miser, 
and the idea that Mount Talbot would have to 
go to a distant cousin infuriated him. He 
wanted it for his daughter, not because he loved 



THE TALBOT CONSPIRACY 203 

her, but because she was his. and he could not 
bear to think of an outsider handling what he 
considered ought to remain in his own family. 

" Are you likely to have a son ? " asked the 
solicitor surprised by the gloomy fury of his 
client. 

" We've been married over six years," answered 
Talbot, with a frown, " and I don't expect we'll 
have any more children." 

" Then you had better leave all you can to your 
daughter," he advised. " There is no need to 
trouble about the Mount Talbot estate." 

From that day Talbot's manner toward his 
wife changed, for he hated her because she had not 
given him a son. He treated her with deliberate 
unkindness, and in the presence of servants 
reproached and insulted her, and more than once 
they heard him express his bitter disappointment 
that he was tied to a woman who was unlikely to 
provide him with an heir to the entailed estate. 
The staff at Mount Talbot often discussed the 
relations between their master and mistress, 
and some of the older servants became appre- 
hensive on her account. 

Mrs. Talbot might be in rags but he refused her 
an allowance, and, as he had her dowry com- 
pletely under his control, she was helpless. She 
could have appealed to her relatives in England, 
but she was afraid that if she did so serious trouble 
would result and she might find herself separated 
from her child. It was always the latter that 
chained her to her husband's house, the husband 



204 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

she had long since ceased to love. But she was 
determined to do her duty by him, and he could 
not make the slightest imputation against her 
character. 

It is probable that he did hope that by cruelty 
and neglect he would drive her into the arms of 
some lover and thus secure the means of obtaining 
a divorce from her, but Mrs. Talbot was not a 
flirt, and she did not care for the society Ros- 
common afforded. In fact, she was a mother, 
first and last, and anything that did not concern 
her daughter had no interest for her. 

When Talbot realised that to get a divorce 
he must manufacture the evidence himself he 
naturally hesitated. It was a dangerous thing 
to do, and it might have cost him a great deal of 
money. Further reflection convinced him that 
his wife's family would not offer any opposition 
provided he presented a fairly strong case against 
her. He believed that they would be so terrified 
of creating a scandal and damaging their reputa- 
tion that they would be willing to hush the pro- 
ceedings up and allow him to have his own way. 

It is fairly certain that had the miserly scoundrel 
known that the matrimonial freedom was to cost 
him £15,000 he would not have begun the cam- 
paign of organised perj ury which he planned in the 
spring of 1852, but he never anticipated having 
to pa}' the costs of four trials. 

The universal condemnation he earned mattered 
little to him. It was the expense that upset his 
calculations. However, when he had taken the 



THE TALBOT CONSPIRACY 205 

first step he could not draw back, because, had 
he done so, he would have run the risk of rinding 
himself in the dock of a criminal court, and he 
persevered in spite of many dangers and pitfalls. 

With all the dark cunning of the miser he care- 
fully prepared the bombshell for his wife's relations. 
Knowing that amongst his present staff of servants 
there was not one vile enough to do his bidding, 
he searched for an abandoned ruffian whose record 
would not be tarnished by participating in an 
attempt to blacken the character of an innocent 
woman. He speedily found the creature whose 
services he required, and Mount Talbot received 
its new butler, Halloran, on March 12th, 1852. 

The fellow was a notorious drunkard and thief, 
and had been dismissed from several situations. 
A judge of the High Court in Ireland later on 
declared that his character was " stamped with 
features of infamy and disgrace," and Halloran 
actually entered Talbot's service without a char- 
acter one month after leaving jail. The fellow, 
of course, had to have a companion-in-perjury 
to corroborate any lies it would be necessary to 
swear on oath, and he was discovered in the person 
of one, Finnerty, a rogue who had also dabbled 
in forgery in addition to the more common vices 
of his colleague. 

When a third confederate had to be enlisted in 
the cause, a groom of loathsome habits, whose 
name was William Mullane, was brought into the 
conspiracy, but he was not permitted to know 
all the intentions of the gang headed by John 



206 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

Talbot, retired army officer and landed proprietor. 

The plans were now ready, and on the 19th May, 
1852, they were put into operation against the 
honour and well-being of an unsuspecting and 
innocent wife and mother. 

It has been mentioned that one of Mrs. Talbot's 
duties was the supervision of the servants' bed- 
rooms, and on the day referred to the villains 
decided to take advantage of her presence in one, 
which contained the bed of Mullane, the groom, 
to accuse her of misconduct. It happened, how- 
ever, that it was not until shortly after midday 
that she entered it and only then because there 
was a fire in it and she wanted to dry the stock- 
ings of her daughter, who had got them wet when 
playing in the farmyard. But once she was 
inside the room the door was suddenly locked 
from the outside, and a minute later Halloran 
and Finnerty were heard loudly demanding ad- 
mission. When they had created the sensation 
they desired they entered and — so they reported 
to John Talbot — they found the lady and the 
groom within, the former secreted with her child 
behind the curtains of the bed. 

Talbot now appeared on the scene in the well- 
rehearsed character of the injured husband. It 
mattered nothing to him that his wife, over- 
whelmed by the terrible accusation against her, 
had passed from hysterics into fainting fits, and 
was almost lifeless. 

He brutally ordered Halloran and Finnerty to 
take complete charge of her, sent for Mullane — 



THE TALBOT CONSPIRACY 207 

who, of course had no reason to avoid an encounter 
with his master in perjury — and paid him his 
wages to the very hour and then dismissed him. 
It was amazingly generous on Talbot's part, con- 
sidering what a miser he was, but it was also an 
indiscreet act, for it is not easy to imagine a man 
troubling to pay all he owes to a servant he believes 
has just seduced his wife. 

However, the master of Mount Talbot was 
in too great a hurry to be able to give these small 
matters his care. He wanted to get to Dublin 
at once and begin divorce proceedings, and when 
he had settled with the presumably guilty groom 
he set out for the Irish capital, leaving Halloran 
and Finnerty in control of his home and his wife 
at their mercy. 

The night that followed was one of misery 
and terror for poor Mrs. Talbot, and it un- 
doubtedly, drove her out of her mind. Halloran 
got drunk, as usual, and made an attempt on her 
honour, and only the interference of the other 
servants saved the unhappy woman. It is not 
surprising that ever afterwards she was never 
quite sane. The loss of her child, who had been 
taken from her, the nature of the charge against 
her and the behaviour of the scoundrels by whom 
she was surrounded, all had their effect on a mind 
already weakened by her husband's unkindness. 

When Talbot returned from Dublin, having 
arranged with his lawyer for an action to be 
instituted against the groom and Mrs. Talbot, he 
was informed by a local clergyman, the Rev. 



208 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

Robert Gage, of Halloran's attempt on his wife. 
He received the news coolly, and he indicated 
what he thought of it by retaining the cur in his 
service and raising his wages. When circum- 
stances did compel him to get rid of him he gave 
the fellow this testimonial : — " Halloran lived 
with me as butler one year, and during that time 
he conducted himself soberly, quietly and honestly. 
He left my service at his own request." Every 
statement was a lie, and yet this county gentleman 
was willing to give a false character to a servant 
who had tried to outrage Mrs. Talbot. 

But Talbot, once proceedings had started, was 
so determined to attain his object that he spent 
money like water, and to the amazement of every- 
body he met with success after success. 

He entered an action against the penniless groom 
Mullane, for damages, and was awarded £2,000, 
but, of course, he did not attempt to collect even 
his costs. Mullane had fled soon after being 
served with the writ, but before he left the neigh- 
bourhood of Mount Talbot he confided in three 
acquaintances that all the trouble had been the 
invention of spiteful servants, and that he had never 
behaved towards Mrs. Talbot except as a servant 
ought to. 

The verdict in his favour was, however, a good 
beginning for the chief conspirator, and, con- 
fident of another triumph, he sued for divorce. 
Extraordinary evidence was given at the hearing 
of the case, and the public heard the history of 
the Talbot family for the first time. 



THE TALBOT CONSPIRACY 209 

Talbot's counsel described the discovery of 
Mrs. Talbot's guilt by Halloran and Finnerty but 
having to admit that these two rogues could not 
be believed even on oath, he announced that he 
would produce a clergyman who would swear that 
the erring wife had confessed her sin to him. 
As a matter of fact three clergymen came forward 
to champion the strong against the weak, and 
the strongest partisan of them, M'Clelland, was a 
brother-in-law to the petitioner. 

This parson stated that Mrs. Talbot in one of 
her lucid intervals had clearly confessed that 
she was a wicked woman and that Mullane, being 
her servant, had not been to blame for yielding 
to her wishes. 

All this seemed very clear, but Mrs. Talbot' 
was not without defenders. When Halloran and 
Finnerty had been relieved of their posts as jailers 
at Mount Talbot her husband had decided to carry 
her off to England and place her in the charge of a 
woman who could be relied on to safeguard his 
interests. By some means or other he had un- 
earthed at Clewer a woman who passed under a 
false name and whose house was little better 
than a brothel. As by this time Mrs. Talbot 
had lost her reason, it was not difficult to smuggle 
her into this hiding-place and keep her presence 
there a secret from her friends and relations for 
nearly six months. During that period her parents 
and her brothers-in-law and sisters had searched 
for her, and it was only by the merest chance 
that Mr. Paget, a barrister, who had married a 



210 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

sister of hers, got a clue to her address and promptly 
removed her to her mother's residence. 

But while she was under confinement Talbot's 
lawyer had visited Mrs. Talbot and had persuaded 
her to sign a certain document. She believed that 
it was some communication to her father ; in 
reality it was an order to a firm of solicitors to 
act on her behalf ; and as John Talbot had 
selected this firm it is easy to understand why 
her defence to the divorce suit in Dublin was 
faulty and most imperfect. 

Despite this, however, a strong case was made 
out for her, thanks to the exertions of Mr. Paget. 
The evidence put forward by the petitioner was 
examined and sifted, and all its glaring weak- 
nesses exposed. Counsel proved to the court the 
absurdity of the statements of Halloran, Finnerty, 
and the other servants who were supporting Talbot. 

It would occupy too much space to go into the 
details of the evidence of the other servants. 
Everyone of them was proved to be lying, with 
the exception of one, who, although called on 
behalf of Talbot, told the truth, and consequently 
could not but speak in favour of Mrs. Talbot. 
She was the one person whose character was 
unassailable, and altogether the case would have 
collapsed if it had not been for the support lent 
the petitioner by the three clergymen. 

These ready tools of the chief conspirator 
appear to have worked overtime on his behalf. 
Disguising themselves as sympathetic ministers 
of the gospel, whose sole object was to afford 



THE TALBOT CONSPIRACY 211 

spiritual comfort to an unhappy woman, they 
had so harassed her with questions and veiled 
accusations that they had tortured her into ex- 
clamations such as "I'm a wicked woman ! " 
" I deserve to die ! " and " My sins are too great ! " 

That she was raving mad when she uttered 
these meaningless remarks they admitted, but 
the judge who presided at the divorce proceedings 
was greatly impressed by them. He had disposed 
of Halloran, Finnert}^ and Co. as worthless 
scoundrels and perjurers, but he was very tender 
with the Revs. Gage, M'Clelland and Kemmis. 

The decision in favour of John Talbot caused 
an immense sensation, but when on appeal to five 
judges, his lordship's ruling was confirmed the 
whole of Great Britain and Ireland was astounded. 

The Press took the subject up, and pamphlets 
and " open letters " were circulated by the un- 
happy woman's champions. The cause was carried 
to the House of Lords, and for the fourth time 
the story was gone into and once again every 
definite statement against the respondent was 
proved to be a lie. Medical evidence was pro- 
duced to show that William Mullane and Mrs. 
Talbot could never have committed adultery, 
and this ought to have been conclusive, but their 
lordships were hypnotised by the trio of parsons, 
and, to the blank astonishment of the nation, 
Talbot was granted his divorce by the highest 
tribunal in the land. 

But it was a Pyrrhic victory. The public 
derided it, and Talbot was treated as a pariah. 



212 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

The woman who had been driven mad by his 
cruelty had the sympathy of the world, but she 
did not survive her separation from her child by 
many years. The wealthy scoundrel who was 
responsible for her insanity never had the son 
he wanted, and the Mount Talbot estate passed 
at his death into possession of a distant relative. 



■ 



CHAPTER XIV 

A SENSATIONAL ELOPEMENT 

The elopement of the wife of Captain the Hon. 
John Cranch Vivian, M.P., and Junior Lord of 
the Treasury, with the fifth Marquis of Waterford 
in the early spring of 1869, had its inevitable 
sequel in the Divorce Court a few months later, 
although it was not until Mr. Prentice, Q.C., out- 
lined the case for the injured husband that the 
public heard of the efforts which had been made 
to prevent a scandal. 

It had been impossible to keep it a secret from 
the relatives of the two families and from certain 
political friends of the petitioner, but for more 
than one reason Captain Vivian would have for- 
given his wife had she consented to return to him. 
However, her emphatic refusal compelled him 
to initiate proceedings, and on August 4th, 1869, 
the petition for divorce was heard by Lord 
Penzance and a jury. 

For Vivian, Sir John Coleridge, then Solicitor- 
General, and afterwards Lord Chief Justice of 
England, had been briefed, along with Mr. Prentice 
and Dr. Swabey, but at the last moment he could 
not attend, and the conduct of the case devolved 
on Prentice, who had an easy task. 

213 



214 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

Lord Waterford, who was only twenty-five, 
did not wish to contest the action, but his family 
deemed it advisable to make some sort of defence, 
and Sir John Karslake and Dr. Tristram were 
retained, and they duly earned their heavy fees 
by objecting successfully to the reading of a 
couple of letters which the marquis and his rela- 
tives were anxious to keep out of the papers. 

That accomplished, they did little else, but, 
despite the fact that there was no real opposition 
to the plaintiff, the suit caused considerable ex- 
citement and sensation owing to the social and 
political importance of the parties to it. 

Captain the Hon John Cranch Vivian left the 
nth Hussars to represent Truro in Parliament. 
A younger son of Lord Vivian, he had more in- 
fluence than brains, but he was respectable, hard- 
working, and ambitious. 

Admiring relatives confidently predicted high 
political office for him when the Liberals came 
into power, and Vivian carried himself with due 
gravity and arrived at middle age without doing 
more than falling in love. 

He had recently lost his first wife when he met 
Florence Rowley, whose father was a major in the 
Indian Army, and when, in 1861, they were 
married at St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, a fashionable 
crowd attended the ceremony, and, doubtless 
regarded the second Mrs. Vivian as a fortunate 
woman, for her husband was rich and had some 
standing in society and Parliament. 

Three children, all girls, were born to them and, 



A SENSATIONAL ELOPEMENT 215 

according to all accounts, the Vivians were a very 
happy and united family during the years they 
resided in Belgrave Square with the Dowager 
Countess of Kinnoull. The M.P. was an indulgent 
husband, genuinely devoted to his wife, and she, 
on her part, did not find him as staid as she had 
expected, and was contented with her lot. 

They went into society a good deal and enter- 
tained in return, and there were always the back- 
stairs gossip and intrigues of the political world 
to add a spice to life. Vivian was in the confidence 
of his leaders, and, being determined to obtain 
office, he was keenly interested in the varying 
fortunes of the two great parties. 

It was two years after his marriage that Vivian 
became acquainted with Henry, fifth Marquis of 
Waterford. In his speech for the petitioner, Mr. 
Prentice stated that the nobleman was then 
twenty-five or twenty-six, but in reality he was 
only nineteen. 

A rather handsome boy, with engaging manners, 
he bore the courtesy title of Earl of Tyrone until, 
in 1866, he inherited the peerage and estates, and 
the Vivians were charmed by him and enthusias- 
tically included him in their circle of acquaintances. 
It had been settled that when he reached twenty- 
one he was to enter Parliament, and for that reason 
he was encouraged to mix with politicians and 
their kind. A younger brother, at this time a 
midshipman, died as Admiral Lord Beresford a 
year or two ago, and another earned a V.C. and 
the rank of general. 



216 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

A close friendship sprang up between Mr. and 
Mrs. Vivian and their youthful friend. The 
M.P. for Truro assumed the role of political tutor, 
and when the future Lord Waterford secured a 
seat in Parliament, gave a dinner in his honour. 
He did not remain there long, however, for the 
death of his father in 1866 removed him to 
" another place." 

But previous to these events the Irish nobleman 
and Mrs. Vivian had formed a separate party 
against her husband. The lady, who was Lord 
Waterford's senior by several years, conceived 
such a passion for him that she could not bear to 
let him out of her sight, and had it not been that 
Vivian was almost as eager to have him in the 
house the crisis might have occurred sooner than 
it did, but with nothing to prevent them meeting 
constantly she was satisfied. 

When he was in possession of the marquisate, 
the Vivians visited him at Curraghmore, his 
historic Irish residence. The two men were on 
familiar terms, and his lordship wrote to " My 
dear Johnny " to congratulate him or console 
with him as occasion demanded. When, for 
instance, Vivian did not receive the appointment 
he had confidently expected, Lord Waterford 
sent him a letter sharply criticising the govern- 
ment and extolling the merits and talents of his 
friend. 

The Beresford family subsequently complained 
that the experienced parliamentarian and man 
of the world ought to have terminated the friend- 



A SENSATIONAL ELOPEMENT 217 

ship between his wife and the young marquis, 
but he could reply with perfect candour and truth 
that in view of the nobleman's tender years and 
his wife's affection for himself he would have been 
ridiculed by her and the marquis had he exhibited 
the slightest jealousy. 

The few persons who doubted the propriety of 
Mrs. Vivian's partiality for Lord Waterford did 
not care to involve themselves in a domestic 
squabble, and the M.P., elated by his inclusion 
in Mr. Gladstone's first administration and im- 
mersed in his new duties, was too proud and self- 
conscious to imagine that anyone would have the 
audacity to steal his wife from him. 

An event which was to have an important effect 
on all concerned was the removal of the Vivians 
from Belgrave Square to Lowndes Street. Now 
that he was a Junior Lord of the Treasury, Captain 
Vivian decided that he must have an establish- 
ment of his own, and, accordingly, the change 
was made. Mrs. Vivian welcomed it with enthu- 
siasm. She had chafed under the watchful eye 
of the Dowager Countess of Kinnoull, a strict old 
lady who, nevertheless, had proved herself an 
exceedingly good friend to the young wife. But 
the latter had no affection for her husband now. 

She and the Marquis of Waterford had come to 
the decision that concealment would soon be 
impossible, and she at any rate was desirous of 
taking definite steps to pave the way to matrimon- 
ial freedom. The welfare of her three children 
was not considered, for she had been rendered 



218 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

reckless by her passion for the Irishman, and she 
hardly troubled to contemplate the serious con- 
sequences of adultery. 

Two near relatives of Lord Waterford's urged 
him to cease visiting the house in Lowndes Street, 
and to avoid Mrs. Vivian at social functions. 
He promised he would, but, knowing that he had 
gone too far to withdraw, he broke his word in 
order to stand by the woman who was prepared to 
endure social extinction and the loss of her children 
for his sake. It is almost certain that by the 
beginning of 1869 he had not the same enthusiasm 
for the intrigue that she had, but she was much 
older and very persuasive, and the Beresford 
tradition was never to let a woman down. 

An anonymous friend of Captain Vivian's un- 
wittingly precipitated the crisis, but who he was, 
or how he managed to secure the two letters he 
forwarded to the M.P., is still unknown. It is 
astonishing that a letter written by Lord Water- 
ford and packed with the most endearing senti- 
ments and protestations of undying love should 
have been mislaid by its recipient, Mrs. Vivian. 

It is equally surprising that a letter from her 
to the marquis, revealing the extent and magni- 
tude of her passion for him, should not have been 
carefully guarded by the nobleman, if not destroyed 
by him. Strangest of all, it is inexplicable how 
both letters should have come into the hands of 
the person who enclosed them in an envelope and 
addressed them to Vivian at the House of Com- 
mons. Anonymous communications are amongst 



A SENSATIONAL ELOPEMENT 219 

the stock ingredients of divorce suits, and they 
have also played their part in crime and history. 
They are bores who worry about the authorship 
of " The Letters of Junius," and the lover of 
justice who omitted his name from the communi- 
cation which led to the undoing of Pritchard, 
the poisoner, never revealed himself. The anony- 
mous slanderer is always with us, and it is rarely 
one of the species is detected and sent to gaol. 

The method adopted to open the eyes of Vivian 
was, however, unique, and the astounded hus- 
band could not disbelieve the evidence thus 
placed in his hands. The shock was terrific, 
and unnerved him, and for some time he could 
not bring himself to go home. He shrank from 
confronting his wife, and was unwilling to force 
a confession from her. The letters were in them- 
selves a confession of guilt by Mrs. Vivian and 
Lord Waterford, but even in these circumstances 
Vivian hoped to retrieve the position. 

Mr. Prentice did not say if husband and wife 
had a scene, although it is known that they shared 
at least one meal together in the house in Lowndes 
Street previous to the elopement. However, the 
moment Mrs. Vivian knew that the intrigue was 
within the knowledge of her husband she hastened 
to get into touch with the marquis, and the day 
after they departed together for the continent. 

There was nothing dramatic or heroic about 
the elopement — there seldom is in these prosaic 
days. Mrs. Vivian, heavily veiled, met her lover 
at the railway station and proceeded with him 



220 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

to Calais, and from there they went to Paris, 
indifferent to the possibilities of recognition en 
route, and oblivious of the consequences of their act. 

The highly neurotic woman was capable of 
touching the extremes of happiness and despair, 
but the friend who saw her in the train remarked 
afterwards that although pale she seemed over- 
joyed. No doubt life with Captain Vivian had 
become unbearable and impossible, and the elope- 
ment was the only cure for her nervous condition. 
At Paris they engaged a suite of rooms at the Hotel 
Westminster, and waited for the storm. 

Captain Vivian's first act on discovering that 
his wife had eloped with the Marquis of Waterford 
was to summon her sister to a conference. His 
chief desire was to save her from disaster and 
bring her back to the three children to whom she 
had been a devoted mother. A minor reason that 
influenced him was the effect the affair might 
have on his political future, and he wanted, if 
possible, to bring Mrs. Vivian home and try and 
make her forget that the marquis had ever existed. 

A private detective, Henry Smith, who had 
recently retired from the police force, was en- 
gaged to trace the fugitives. He had little diffi- 
culty in picking up a trail that led to Paris, and 
his report to Vivian was a detailed account of the 
journey of the guilty couple from London to the 
French capital. Apparently Lord Waterford had 
been recognised by several of his fellow travellers 
who had been ignorant of the identity of the 
lady who accompanied him. 



A SENSATIONAL ELOPEMENT 221 

Once they had Mrs. Vivian's Paris address, 
Mrs. Knight, her sister, and Captain Vivian deter- 
mined to have an interview with her. On their 
arrival at Paris they put up at the Grand Hotel, 
and the same afternoon Mrs. Knight drove to the 
Westminster, and, without announcing herself, 
walked into the room occupied by Mrs. Vivian. 
The latter was completely taken by surprise 
and burst into tears, and she broke down when 
she heard that her husband was only a short 
distance from her and that he wished her to receive 
him so that they might amicably discuss the 
position. 

" I daren't see him," exclaimed the over- 
wrought woman. " I'm sure he could never 
forgive me for the wrong I've done him." 

" You must meet him, Florence," urged Mrs. 
Knight, who was equally distressed. " Will you 
fling away a chance that may never occur again ? 

" Don't torture me," cried Mrs. Vivian angrily, 
but the next moment she was apologising for her 
ingratitude. 

" If you won't go to John," said Mrs. Knight 
finally, " he will have to come to you, and I won't 
be responsible for what may happen if he meets 
Lord Waterford here." 

The suggestion that her husband and her lover 
might have a public quarrel in the hotel alarmed 
Mrs. Vivian, who immediately promised to call 
at the Grand if she were first allowed a couple of 
hours' rest. 

" Take the night to think it over," her sister 



222 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

advised her. " You are not in a fit condition 
now to see anyone." 

The following afternoon Captain Vivian and 
Mrs. Knight waited anxiously and nervously 
at the Grand Hotel for the arrival of the faithless 
wife. Realising something of her feelings, and 
understanding what an ordeal it would be for 
her, they were afraid that she would not appear, 
but at three o'clock she came, deathly pale, and 
trembling violently. Before she spoke Mrs. Knight 
left the room, and husband and wife were alone 
to decide between them their future course of 
action. 

Hitherto nothing had been seen of the marquis, 
who had wisely kept out of the way after the 
arrival of Captain Vivian. He was still in Paris, 
but he stopped at another hotel until Vivian and 
his sister-in-law returned to London. 

The meeting between the injured husband and 
the mother of his children lasted an hour and a 
half, and most of the talking was done by the 
former, who again and again implored her to give 
up Lord Waterford and accompany him to Lowndes 
Street. He assured her that the elopement was 
still their own secret and he pointed out that if 
she compelled him to divorce her she would lose 
her children and in all probability her seducer 
would not marry her owing to the disparity in 
their ages. 

He reminded her that the numerous powerful 
relations of the marquis would fight tooth and 
nail to prevent him making her his wife, and he 



A SENSATIONAL ELOPEMENT 223 

wound up by reminding her that she could have 
no cause for complaint against him. 

Except for an occasional ejaculation of remorse 
or self-pity, the woman scarcely spoke. She 
cried when her children were mentioned, but 
she did not speak of them at all. Captain Vivian 
was not noted for eloquence, but his appeal to 
his wife was inspired by genuine feeling, and if 
she had not been so slavishly in love with the Irish 
nobleman she could not have resisted it, and 
must have gone straight from the Grand Hotel 
to London with her husband. 

The most she could promise, however, was to 
consider all he had said, and when she parted 
from Vivian it was understood that she was to 
give him her decision by letter as soon as possible. 
He hoped that she would find writing unnecessary 
and that she would come to him in person and 
promise never to think of Waterford again, and 
it was in this frame of mind that he remained at 
the Grand for her. 

It was nearly six the same evening when a 
special messenger handed him a letter in the 
familiar handwriting of the woman he still loved, 
but before he tore the envelope open he must have 
guessed that she had decided against him, though 
he did not admit that until he had glanced at the 
brief message which dismissed him from her life 
and left her and her reputation at the mercy of a 
man who was considerably under the influence 
of strong-minded relatives who disliked her. Her 
jetter was a mixture of hysteria, remorse, and 



224 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

fear, and it revealed the signficant news that the 
marquis had advised her to accept the offer of her 
husband. 

" Five o'clock. I cannot go," she wrote, " I 
have tried and tried to give him up, and, against 
his own urgent advice, I shall stay. For God's 
sake, don't think too hardly of me or I shall do 
myself some harm. I am going to my ruin, I 
know, but it is impossible for me to go back. Try 
and forgive me in your heart. I could not look 
at those poor children after what I have done, 
and do not send for me for Heaven's sake." 

The reading of this letter in court made it 
certain that the action would not be defended 
seriously, and when Mr. Prentice called his wit- 
nesses their evidence was not disputed by the 
other side. The Dowager Countess of Kinnoull 
testified to the mutual happiness of Captain and 
Mrs. Vivian until the friendship with the Marquis 
of Waterford developed, and Smith, the detective, 
and various other minor characters in the drama, 
assisted to prove that adultery had been com- 
mitted by the respondent. 

It was a clear case, and, as Sir John Karslake 
did not attempt to palliate his client's offence, 
the proceedings did not occupy a whole day. 
The verdict was, of course, in favour of the pe- 
titioner and the usual decree was pronounced and 
the Marquis of Waterford ordered to pay the 
costs. The crowd which had packed the court 
came out into the August sunshine discussing 
what it had heard, and, despite wars and rumours 



A SENSATIONAL ELOPEMENT 225 

of wars, in the clubs and drawing-rooms and 
other places where men congregate the Vivian 
divorce suit was the topic of the hour. 

It was generally thought that at the end of the 
regulation six months the decree nisi would be 
made absolute and that immediately afterwards 
Mrs. Vivian would become Marchioness of Water- 
ford, but the relations of the nobleman had dif- 
ferent opinions on that subject. 

An uncle of his, Colonel Leslie, had been incensed 
by the miserable intrigue, and he determined to 
stop the match. The lady was so much older 
than his nephew, and, there were many objections 
to her entering the Beresford family that he took 
the extreme course of applying to the court to 
order the Queen's Proctor to intervene. Colonel 
Leslie appears to have become obsessed with the 
notion that the whole affair had been deliberately 
arranged between the Vivians and Lord Waterford 
to enable the M.P. to pass his wife on to the 
marquis. He gave the public the impression that 
he believed that the youth and inexperience of 
his nephew had been taken advantage of and 
that he had been victimised by the politician 
and his astute, if neurotic, wife. 

The idea was ridiculous, and had not the smallest 
justification, and the colonel eventually admitted 
this to the judge and asked to be allowed to with- 
draw his application. A legal argument ensued 
to decide if he could be condemned to pay the costs. 
However, it was found that he could not be held 
responsible for the expenses, and thus after a 

p 



226 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

vexatious and worrying delay Captain Vivian 
obtained his complete divorce in June, 1870, and 
the Hon. Mrs. Vivian was free to marry. 

But the Beresfords and the Leslies did not relax 
their efforts. They were bitterly opposed to a 
union between the marquis and the lady, whom 
they regarded as the temptress. He was im- 
plored to desert her, and to refuse to meet her. 
They induced him to offer her a considerable 
sum of money, but, wise in her generation, she 
refused to accept any compensation except 
marriage. 

The redoubtable Colonel Leslie took him in 
charge, and showered advice on him. It might 
have had the wished-for effect if the Hon. Mrs. 
Vivian had not fallen ill. On hearing of this, 
Lord Waterford hastened to her side, and a few 
minutes later they were married, but the date of 
the ceremony was nearly three years subsequent 
to the hearing of her first husband's petition for 
divorce. Within a year, however, she died, and 
in 1876 Lord Waterford married the daughter 
of a duke. He ought to have found life pleasant 
and profitable, but his youthful eccentricities 
increased with age, and, in 1895, he startled the 
world by committing suicide. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE GARDNER PUZZLE 

When in March, 1796, Captain the Hon. Alan 
Gardner, R.N., married Miss Maria Elizabeth 
Adderley, he and his bride had the good wishes 
of all their friends and acquaintances, for it ap- 
peared to be an ideal match in every respect. 
The sailor possessed all those qualities which go 
to make members of his profession so popular 
with both sexes, while the lady was young, ex- 
ceedingly beautiful, and had a charming, winsome 
manner which captivated everybody. She brought 
her husband an adequate dowry, and there was 
no reason to doubt that the marriage would be a 
success. But, as a matter of fact, it proved a 
failure, though, if Gardner had remained at home, 
he might have prevented the catastrophe. 

For the first five years there was nothing to 
cloud their happiness. The young officer was 
permitted to take his wife with him when he was 
on service, and at each port the ship touched 
they found friends, and, as befitting their social 
position, were entertained lavishly. Mrs. Gardner 
enjoyed these voyages. She was popular with the 
seamen, and the deference paid her by the officers 
gratified a beauty whose composition contained 
a large amount of vanity. She visited China and 

227 



28 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

Japan, Australia, and South Africa, and every 
day of her existence she saw something fresh, 
fc't was just the life for a woman who had a horror 
of solitude, and who, as she expressed it, " could 
not bear to have no one to talk to." The bustling 
yet disciplined world aboard ship suited her ad- 
mirably, and she sighed with regret when they 
returned to Portsmouth, after a long voyage, 
with the knowledge that it would be many months 
before they should set sail again. 

However, Mrs. Gardner could not be depressed 
for long, and within a few days she was her bright, 
cheerful self again, and night after night she dined 
or danced at some famous house in the West-end 
of London. Her husband generally accompanied 
her, obviously proud of her beauty and vivacity, 
and fully conscious that his own popularity had 
been increased by the personality of his wife. 

Her attractiveness, however, was the chief 
cause of her downfall, and it only needed an ad- 
mirer bolder than usual to secure a place in her 
affections, for Mrs. Gardner was of the butterfly 
order of beauty, and her subsequent conduct 
proved that she had very few scruples. 

It happened that one evening she and her hus- 
band were preparing to drive to the London resi- 
dence of the Earl of Strathmore, when the naval 
officer received a communication from the Ad- 
miralty which necessitated his attending the 
First Lord at once. He therefore left her at 
Lord Strathmore's, promising to come for her 
later. 



THE GARDNER PUZZLE 229 

At the house of the Scottish nobleman she met 
several old friends, and one man, hitherto a 
stranger to her. The latter was Henry Jadis, 
and Mrs. Gardner had not been in his company 
ten minutes before she decided that he was quite 
different from other men. Jadis was tall, and 
had fine, clear-cut features, which were illumined 
by a singularly compelling expression radiating 
kindness and happiness. He was an interesting 
talker, too, and he expressed himself wittily 
and epigrammatically. 

To her surprise, Mrs. Gardner found herself 
hoping that her husband would not be able to 
call for her, and she experienced a sense of relief 
when, at eleven, she heard Jadis beg for the honour 
of conducting her home in his carriage. She did 
not refuse his offer, and that journey through the 
silent streets was an episode in her life which the 
wife of the peer's son never forgot. 

That she fell in love with Jadis that night there 
is no reason to doubt, and that he was amazed 
when he discovered his conquest is equally obvious. 
Perhaps Jadis never intended to fascinate the 
Hon. Mrs. Gardner, and very likely he flattered 
her without suspecting that she might take him 
seriously. 

She was a married woman, and report had it 
that she and her husband were perfectly happy, 
and the rich man-about-town may have imagined 
that it would be safe to make love to her. If 
that was his state of mind, he soon had reason to 
feel sorry for himself, for he became one of the 



230 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

chief figures in an intrigue which created much 
gossip and not a little sensation in Society. 

Before the month was out Jadis was on friendly 
terms with Captain Gardner, and had become a 
regular caller at the house which Lord Gardner's 
son had rented for the season. The naval officer 
welcomed Jadis with open arms, for he was a man 
who influenced everybody with whom he came 
in contact, and he appeared to have such a fine 
sense of honour that Gardner never had the least 
suspicion of his intentions, finding in Mrs. Gard- 
ner's liking for him another reason why he should 
be invited. But, with a woman willing to run 
any risks to secure the society of the man with 
whom she was secretly in love, it did not require 
much to change Jadis into something more than a 
mere friend. 

The time soon came when Mrs. Gardner and 
Jadis were meeting unknown to her husband. 
At first they exercised the greatest caution, but 
continued success in evading Captain Gardner 
rendered them careless, and, if the officer had not 
had such implicit faith in his wife he would have 
discovered for himself the nature of the intrigue. 

Practically everybody else in Society knew of it, 
and the subject was discussed everywhere, but 
Gardner was absolutely ignorant of his wife's 
infidelity, and he was genuinely distressed when he 
was ordered by the Admiralty to assume command 
of H.M.S. Resolution, and at the same time notified 
that he would not be permitted to take his wife 
with him. 



THE GARDNER PUZZLE 231 

The thought of being separated from her for 
a year upset him, and if it had not been that he 
feared to offend his father, Lord Gardner, he 
would have resigned his commission. However, 
Mrs. Gardner agreed to accompany him to Ports- 
mouth, and to remain on board the ship until it 
was due to sail, and with this he had to be content. 

The day came, however, when she had to be put 
ashore for the last time, and after an affecting 
leave-taking, she stepped into the tender, and, 
waving a farewell to her husband, was rowed 
towards the land. 

The date was February 7th, and she did not 
see him again until July 10th — both very import- 
ant dates, for the reason that on 8th December 
in the same year she was delivered of a male 
infant, who was christened Henry Fenton Gardner, 
although his birth was kept a secret from Captain 
Gardner. 

Once her husband was out of the way, Mrs. 
Gardner threw herself into the arms of Jadis, 
and they scandalised Society by appearing every- 
where together. They flung discretion to the 
winds, did not even attempt to conceal their doings 
from Gardner's own servants, and the woman 
declined invitations to houses where her lover 
was not received. 

The few friends who proffered advice were told 
to mind their own business, and eventually the 
scandal became so great that Lord Gardner declined 
to see his daughter-in-law, and Henry Jadis 
was advised to resign from his clubs. 



232 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

But the lovers were not affected by the censure 
of the world. They defied criticism and went 
their own way, and when Mrs. Gardner informed 
Jadis that she was expecting a child, he saw no 
reason why it should not be palmed off on the 
naval officer as his own offspring. 

It was shortly after she had advised Jadis of 
her condition that Captain Gardner unexpectedly 
returned home. He was still blissfully ignorant 
of his wife's behaviour, and for a few weeks they 
lived together, and he got the impression that the 
long-wished-for heir was on the way. 

Had a child been born within nine months of 
February 7th, all might have been well, but it was 
not due until December, which, of course, ren- 
dered it impossible for the infant to be legitimate. 

Soon, however, the nature of the gossip con- 
cerning his wife reached the ears of Gardner, but 
his indignant protests against the slanderers were 
followed by evidence which convinced him that 
rumour was right. In the meantime a very 
important event had happened — the birth of 
Mrs. Gardner's baby. 

She had fully realised the absurdity of trying 
to persuade her husband that he was the father 
of the child, and so she arranged for the birth to 
be kept a secret. This she managed to do by 
means of much cunning and considerable luck, for 
Captain Gardner was away in the country when 
the infant came into the world, and the mother 
ordered her maid, Susan Baker, to take it the 
same day to a Mrs. Bailey, who had agreed to 



THE GARDNER PUZZLE 233 

nurse it and keep its existence unknown to Captain 
Gardner and his family. 

The little plot was carried out without a hitch, 
and when the officer returned he accepted the 
false explanation of his wife's illness, but a few 
months later he discovered the familiar terms 
on which his wife and Henry Jadis were, and 
that instant he quitted the house. 

His lawyers got to work, and an action for 
damages was brought against Jadis, who was 
ordered to pay one thousand pounds compensation 
to the outraged husband. A divorce suit speedily 
followed, and some two j^ears after the birth of 
Henry Fenton Gardner the latter 's mother was a 
divorced woman, and engaged to be married to 
her lover. 

Her second marriage was no sooner accom- 
plished than her secret child was removed from 
the care of Mrs. Bailey and openly acknowledged 
by Mr. and Mrs. Jadis, and in due course the boy 
was sent to Westminster School, where he was 
known by the name of Henry Fenton Jadis, 
and did very well. 

From all accounts Mrs. Jadis was perfectly 
happy with her second husband, and in time 
Society forgot her errors, and she and Jadis were 
received at houses which had been closed to them 
by the divorce proceedings. Occasionally she 
read about her first husband in the newspapers 
and it was not without some emotion — for she 
was an ambitious woman — that she saw a notice 
of his father's death, for this meant that the naval 



234 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

officer was now a peer of the realm and the owner 
of the family estates. 

Two years after his accession to the title, Alan, 
Lord Gardner, married the Hon. Charlotte Smith, 
daughter of Lord Carrington, a union which 
greatly strengthened his position and also 
brought him great happiness. 

When a son was born, that happiness seemed 
to be complete, for he had longed for an heir, but 
he was destined to die within seven years of his 
second marriage, leaving the boy, Alan Legge 
Gardner, aged six, to inherit the barony as third 
Lord Gardner. 

Lord Carrington was appointed guardian of 
the infant peer, and his office seemed to be a 
nominal one entailing very little trouble, but 
about nine years from his son-in-law's death he 
was amazed to be informed that the youth who 
had gone to Westminster as Henry Jadis had 
dropped the last name and insisted on being called 
Henry Fenton Gardner. 

Furthermore, he intended to claim the barony 
of Gardner on the ground that he was legally the 
eldest son of the late Alan, second Lord Gardner. 
This was a bombshell, and Lord Carrington foresaw 
plenty of trouble for all concerned, unless steps 
were taken at once to disprove Henry Fenton 
Gardner's claim. 

Accordingly, he petitioned the king to confirm 
his grandson's right to the title, and, his petition 
having been referred to the Attorney-General, 
the latter gave it as his opinion that Alan Legge 
was the heir. 



THE GARDNER PUZZLE 235 

He advised, however, an enquiry before a 
tribunal so that all doubts might be set at rest, 
and a court consisting of the legal members of the 
House of Lords, presided over by the Lord Chan- 
cellor, sat specially to decide whether Henry 
Fenton Gardner or Alan Legge Gardner was 
entitled to style himself third Lord Gardner. 

Henry Fenton Gardner, at the age of twenty- 
one, was a very ambitious young man who quar- 
relled with his mother for having entered him at 
Westminster under the name of her second hus- 
band. He accused her of trying to deprive him 
of his rights, and he now informed the Attorney- 
General that he was the real Lord Gardner, and, 
as he had a large sum of money placed at his dis- 
posal by Henry Jadis, who was commonly accepted 
as his father, he lacked none of the sinews of war. 

The trial was one of the most interesting con- 
nected with a disputed peerage, and it remains 
in a class by itself because of the fact that some 
of the leading doctors of the day gave evidence 
as to the possibility or otherwise of a woman 
having a child eleven months after cohabiting 
with her husband. 

It was Henry Fenton Gardner's contention that 
he was the elder son of the second Lord Gardner, 
and that when the latter — then, of course, Captain 
the Hon. Alan Gardner — returned home in the 
year that witnessed Henry's birth, he had known 
that his wife was expecting a child, and had 
accepted the position as a natural one. 

Old servants and friends were called as well 



236 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

as the doctors, and Mrs. Gardner's once favourite 
maid, Susan Baker, gave a history of the intrigue 
between her mistress and Henry Jadis in a manner 
which indicated that she had reason not to wish 
Mrs. Gardner well. 

In cross-examination it was elicited that Susan 
had quarrelled with the lady, but that did not 
weaken her very circumstantial account of the 
incidents which led up to the divorce suit by 
Captain Gardner. 

Doctors will always differ, and Henry Fenton 
Gardner was able to produce medical men who 
expressed the opinion that it was possible that 
Captain Gardner was his father. The balance of 
expert opinion pointed to young Legge as being 
the only son of his father, and the judgment of 
the court was to the effect that Henry Fenton 
Gardner was not Lord Gardner's son, and that 
Alan Legge was the holder of the barony, and 
entitled, when he came of age, to take his seat 
in the House of Lords. 

Undoubtedly the non-medical fact which did 
most to demolish Henry Fenton Gardner's claim 
was the extraordinary precaution taken by his 
mother to conceal his birth. The petty but suc- 
cessful manoeuvre to get Captain Gardner out 
of the house, the arrangements with Mrs. Bailey, 
and the active assistance of Susan Baker were 
all proved to the satisfaction of their lordships, 
who were also informed that Mrs. Gardner had not 
told her own mother that she had had a baby. 

Now, if her child had been legitimate, she must 



THE GARDNER PUZZLE 237 

have been proud of being the mother of the heir 
to the title. As it was, she was only anxious to 
keep the world in ignorance of it, and it was only 
when she was divorced by her husband that she 
acknowledged the infant's existence. 

There was nothing significant to be inferred from 
the boy's name when at Westminster, for there 
was something to be said in favour of his mother's 
second husband giving the boy his own name to 
avoid confusion. 

Very little was said about any resemblance 
between the elder claimant and the late peer, 
principally because Henry knew that he had 
nothing in common with the man he swore was 
his father. In appearance he was a Jadis, and 
not a Gardner, and one can only marvel at his 
hardihood in advancing the claim at all. 

He was, as might have been expected, dis- 
satisfied with the decision, and wished to style 
himself Lord Gardner, but older and wiser friends 
persuaded him to be sensible, and before the 
public had ceased to discuss the amazing trial 
he had retired into obscurity. 

The successful claimant lived until 1883, and 
when he died leaving no son there was great un- 
certainty as to who was his successor. Since the 
hearing of the famous case the descendants of 
the younger sons of the first Lord Gardner had 
undergone many adventures, and the family was 
scattered all over the world. 

A great-grandson of the founder of the family 
had married a native girl in India about the time 



238 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

of the Indian Mutiny, in which he served as a 
trooper. Another descendant of the first lord 
had likewise taken to wife a dusky maiden. Both 
these adventurers in matrimony had sons and 
daughters, and both claimed to be the successor 
to the third holder of the peerage. 

Apparently each doubted the legality of other 
marriages in the family, and thus the peerage is 
at present dormant, and no one knows who ought 
to have it. It is fairly certain, however, that 
somewhere in the world there is a man who has 
the right to call himself Lord Gardner, and it is 
equally probable that he is in a humble station in 
life. 

The writer met a few years ago a handsome 
man in the thirties who claimed the barony, and 
at intervals insisted on being addressed as Lord 
Gardner. He looked a Gardner to the life, and 
it was in his favour that he strongly resembled 
the first and second peers. 

But there was some informality in the marriage 
of his parents, or he may have found it impossible 
to satisfy the House of Lords on the point. In 
any case he was not accepted as a peer, and when 
he died he was still just a claimant. The problem 
is complicated by the inability of the Gardners 
themselves to agree as to which of them is the 
head of the family. 

There are, of course, plenty of instances of 
lineal descendants of peers who have had to toil 
for their living. Some time ago an elderly work- 
house master passed away in a Devonshire village, 



THE GARDNER PUZZLE 239 

and only at his death did it become known that 
he was related by ties of blood to a ducal family. 
There used to be a cab-driver in London who 
would have been an earl had six individuals, 
who stood between him and the title, expired 
before him, and until recently there was a miner 
in South Wales who was sixth in descent from 
the first Lord Gardner, his grandmother having 
been a granddaughter of the nobleman. 

It is probable that the Gardner title will never 
be claimed, for there is no property attached to it, 
and a coronet without ready money is only an 
embarrassment. The only chance is that a Gard- 
ner may make a fortune and then consider it 
worth while to open up another chapter in the 
history of a family which has, during the last 
hundred years, provided more than one sensation. 

Henry Fenton Gardner, the defeated claimant, 
married early, and had several sons, so that if he 
had gained the verdict there would have been no 
problem about the succession. But his offspring 
never entertained any hope of getting the peerage, 
and his descendants have long since ceased to 
count as factors in the dispute. 

It was estimated that it cost Lord Carrington 
twenty thousand pounds to establish his grand- 
son's rights, but, as his lordship was a millionaire 
banker and a great landed proprietor, the expendi- 
ture was of no consequence to him, and he must 
have considered himself amply repaid when he 
gained the title for the son of his widowed daughter, 
who was his favourite child. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE INCONVENIENT MARRIAGE 

When it was rumoured that the Earl of Euston, 
the eldest son and heir of the Duke of Grafton, 
had instructed his solicitors to bring an action in 
the Divorce Court to have his marriage annulled 
the sensation was great. Nearly thirteen years 
previously the country had been startled by the 
unexpected marriage of the young earl — he was 
only twenty-three — and Kate Cook, a woman 
with a lurid " past," who was eight or ten years 
older than her lover, and ever since gossip had 
been busy with both. Many accounts of that 
marriage had been given in the papers, but it was 
not until Sir Charles Russell, Q.C., who led for 
the plaintiff, delivered his opening speech that 
the full details were revealed. The story he told 
was a very remarkable one, and long before he 
sat down nearly everybody present must have 
regarded the issue as certain. 

According to the famous counsel, who later 
became Lord Chief Justice of England, Lord Euston 
had fallen in love with Kate Cook at first sight. 
She had been a minor actress, and more often than 
not out of an engagement, but she always dressed 
well, was remarkable for her cheery disposition, 

240 



THE INCONVENIENT MARRIAGE 241 

and, being a clever, artful woman of the world, 
had had no difficulty in fascinating the very sus- 
ceptible heir to the ancient dukedom. 

The youthful aristocrat made violent love to 
the beauty, and, as he was proud of his acquaint- 
ance with her, he took no trouble to conceal it, 
and they were seen together constantly. When 
his relatives heard of his passion family influence 
was brought to bear on him, and he was implored 
not to marry her. Lord Euston laughingly de- 
clared that he was not a marrying man, and that 
Kate did not expect him to make her his wife. 

" Let him sow his wild oats," said a cynical 
uncle. " Young as he is, he isn't such an ass 
as to marry such a woman." 

This became the opinion of his family, and for 
more than a year the earl and Kate Cook were 
on intimate terms, and those who were in the con- 
fidence were under the impression that they would 
never become man and wife. 

But the woman secretly cherished an ambition 
to become Countess of Euston. Despite her 
affection of gaiety her life had been a sordid one, 
and she was usually discontented. Her parents 
had been humble working-class folk and Kate 
had suffered much from poverty. Many men had 
come into her life, but she had never had a real 
lover until now, and she, therefore, did her best 
to make the earl believe that she was necessary to 
his existence, and eventually she persuaded him 
to marry her. 

In the circumstances marriage was a great 

Q 



242 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

adventure. The Duke of Grafton had never 
ceased to keep an eye on his son in London, and 
Lord Euston realised that it would be impossible 
to have the ceremony performed in the metropolis. 
He was aware that his family would go to any 
extreme to prevent it taking place and that the 
fear of scandal would not deter them from trying 
to save him from himself, even if it meant a public 
scene. 

He and Kate had many debates as to where and 
how they could be married, and, finally, it was 
decided that she should pay a visit to Worcester 
and live in retirement there for a week or two 
until she was joined by her lover who was to come 
provided with a special license. 

They carried out their plans without a hitch, 
and one morning the young nobleman and the 
pretty actress were married by the rector of a 
church in the famous cathedral city. Lord Euston 
walked out of the building proud and happy. He 
had been carried away by the romance of the 
affair, and he felt like a knight-errant, for the 
world seemed to be against his bride, and he was 
determined to protect her. 

There is little doubt that the bridegroom had 
been influenced by the stronger personality of 
the woman and that she had to make many ap- 
peals to his sense of chivalry before he agreed 
to give her his name. He was in a state of quixotic 
emotion when he did so, but it could not last for 
long, and the day came when he realised that he 
had perpetrated a blunder likely to ruin his life. 



THE INCONVENIENT MARRIAGE 243 

When the news of his marriage leaked out 
his family and friends were horrified. It was 
not that they objected to his marrying a girl 
in an inferior social position. Other noblemen 
had wedded actresses and had easily overcome 
the prejudice thus temporarily created, but this 
was something quite different, and the new Lady 
Euston had such a reputation that she and her 
husband were ostracised, and Lord Euston, hitherto 
popular in Society, found himself an outcast with 
every door closed against him. 

The opposition and the treatment he met with 
exasperated him, but he had not been married 
six months before he discovered the hideous mis- 
take he had made. Determined, however, to do 
his best by his wife he settled every penny he 
possessed on her — £10,000 — and stuck to her until 
her conduct made it impossible for him to live 
with her. Then he separated from her, secured 
an appointment in Australia and left England. 
They had been married four years when the final 
parting took place and they did not see each other 
again till they met in the Divorce Court. 

The position, however, was an unenviable one 
for the heir to a dukedom, and, although it seemed 
that Lord Euston must pay dearly for his folly 
for the remainder of his life, his family, rendered 
desperate by the unsatisfactory state of affairs, 
initiated a thorough investigation into the ante- 
cedents of Lady Euston, hoping to discover some- 
thing that would enable them to win matrimonial 
freedom for the future head of the Fitzroys. 



244 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

It appeared to be sheer waste of money, and 
the duke was advised to " let sleeping dogs lie," 
but he refused. Expense was no object and if 
they failed they would have the satisfaction of 
knowing that they had done their best. 

A clever solicitor took up the case on behalf 
of the Duke of Grafton, and a beginning was 
made with an enquiry into the first marriage of 
Kate Cook, who had described herself as a widow 
at her second wedding. After a great deal of 
trouble it was ascertained that when very young 
she had hastily married a commercial traveller 
of the name of George M. Smith at St. Mungo's 
Catholic Chapel, Glasgow. The ceremony had 
been almost a secret one and, for some unknown 
reason, within twenty-four hours of it husband 
and wife had separated. 

At the time Kate had been appearing in the 
chorus at a local theatre, and there is no doubt 
that she was very beautiful and attractive. But 
why she should have become the wife of Smith 
was never revealed. But the fact remained that 
she did so and that she had been relieved when 
he had agreed to let her go her own way. 

For years after this secret marriage Kate Cook 
had led an adventurous life in which her husband 
took no part. She had had many ups and downs ; 
now apparently rich and prosperous ; then poor 
and despairing. 

The proprietor of a circus had been her friend 
for a brief time, supplying her with plenty of 
money and introducing her to his Bohemian 



THE INCONVENIENT MARRIAGE 245 

acquaintances, and, when he had abandoned her, 
Kate had descended into the depths. She was 
just recovering from this set-back when she was 
introduced to another chorus girl who presented 
her to the Earl of Euston. 

" But when did George M. Smith die ? " That 
was a question often asked by the investigators, 
who strove to secure a clue to the doings of the 
commercial traveller subsequent to his marriage. 
They did not approach Lady Euston, for the 
excellent reason that they did not wish her to 
know that they were working in secret against her, 
and they were beginning to despair of finding 
the answer to it when, by a fortunate chance, they 
came upon a solution. 

In the course of her career it had been Kate 
Cook's misfortune to be summoned many times 
for debt, and when each of these summonses was 
being examined by the duke's representative he 
came upon a signed statement by the lady herself. 
It was to the effect that she was unable to pay 
because she was a widow without employment, 
her husband, George M. Smith, having had the 
misfortune to be drowned in the wreck of the 
London. 

Now the loss of the London had been a very 
sensational affair, which had attracted wide-world 
attention, and the duke's agent knew that there 
was in existence a complete list of those on board 
at the time of the disaster. When he went to the 
offices of the company which owned the ship 
he was inspired by a feeling that he would find 



246 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

no " George M. Smith " on the list, and he believed 
that he was very near success. His disappoint- 
ment may be imagined when half way down the 
catalogue of the dead he saw the one name he 
did not wish to see. 

It was a knock-down blow, and reluctantly he 
reported to his employer that Kate Cook had 
been a widow when she married Lord Euston, 
but he was instructed for form's sake to enquire 
into the matter more fully, and, accordingly, he 
asked the shipping company to give him any 
particulars they could of the relations of the 
" George M. Smith " who had gone down with 
the London. They did so, and hope returned 
when he received the name and address of the 
widow, for it was not that of Lady Euston. The 
investigator immediately called on Mrs. George 
M. Smith, and to his joy heard that there could 
never have been any relationship between her 
husband and Kate Cook. 

Here was an astounding piece of good luck. 
When the Fitzroy family were informed of it 
they were delighted. They persevered and found 
evidence which convinced them that the woman 
who had entrapped their son had committed 
bigamy by marrying him, and that Lord Euston 
would only have to apply to the President of the 
Divorce Court to secure his freedom, while she 
would not be able to call herself Countess of 
Euston a moment after the decree had been 
pronounced. 

The good news was immediately sent to the 



THE INCONVENIENT MARRIAGE 247 

young earl, and he resigned his appointment in 
Australia and returned home. A writ was there- 
upon issued, and Lady Euston's advisers im- 
mediately briefed Mr. Inderwick, Q.C., and another 
barrister to champion her cause. 

On her appearance in court every eye was 
turned in the direction of the defendant, and it 
was noticed at once that she displayed nervous- 
ness when she caught sight of her first husband, 
George M. Smith, seated next to the lady who 
was the widow of the Smith who had lost his life 
in the shipwreck of the London. But she quickly 
regained her composure, and even when Sir Charles 
Russell was thundering accusations against her 
and making the most serious and damaging state- 
ments about her past her countenance never 
changed. 

The wealthy and influential Fitzroys had, cer- 
tainly, left nothing to chance, for from the moment 
they had established beyond the shadow of a 
doubt that Kate Cook's husband had not been 
on the London they had poured out money like 
water to discover his whereabouts. Finally, at 
an expenditure of some thousands of pounds they 
ran him to earth in New Zealand, and persuaded 
him to return to England and give evidence in one 
of the most sensational cases ever tried in the 
courts. 

When counsel had explained that he had com- 
plete proofs of the defendant's bigamy, and that 
amongst his witnesses were her former husband, 
the widow of the Smith who had been drowned, 



248 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

and a witness of the marriage at the Catholic 
chapel in Glasgow, it seemed to those present 
that there could be no real defence. 

Some sympathy was expressed for the woman 
who, whatever her faults may have been, was 
in danger of losing a great title and the right to 
demand the support of her husband, and it was 
rough luck on her to be changed from a countess 
into the wife of a commercial traveller by a few 
words pronounced by the President of the Divorce 
Court. Everybody marvelled at her composure. 
Lady Euston appeared to be less affected by the 
prevalent excitement than any of the spectators. 

The most important witness was, of course, 
Smith, the man who had married Kate Cook 
years previously and who had parted from her 
after the briefest experience of matrimony. He 
gave his evidence reluctantly, and it was plain 
that he was very nervous ; and the reason for this 
became apparent when Mr. Inderwick, Q.C., 
rose to cross-examine. 

" You married my client at Glasgow ? " he 
asked, politely. 

" Yes, sir," said Smith, eagerly. 

" You described yourself as a bachelor ? " 

The witness nodded, but there was fear in his 
eyes. 

" Was that true ? " demanded counsel, leaning 
forward and fixing him with a stare that meant 
volumes. 

Smith hesitated. He knew little of the procedure 
in courts of law, but he had a vague idea that 



THE INCONVENIENT MARRIAGE 249 

perjury was a severely punishable offence, and he 
did not wish to commit himself. But he was on 
the horns of a dilemma, and it was only after 
counsel had pressed him that with dry lips he 
whispered that he had not been a bachelor when 
he had gone through that secret ceremony with 
Kate Cook. 

" You were, in fact, a married man ? " said 
counsel remorselessly. " Isn't that so ? You had 
a wife living at the time ? You had deserted her, 
and it was because you feared that she might 
discover you were a bigamist and have you arrested 
that you deserted my client ? " 

" I didn't desert her," exclaimed the wretched 
man. " We agreed to separate, and we parted 
friends." 

" But the suggestion first came from you ? " 
persisted Mr. Inderwick. " Come, had you a wife 
living when you married Lady Euston ? " 

" I had not," he answered doggedly. 

During this cross-examination the face of Sir 
Charles Russell was a perfect study in bewilder- 
ment. It was obvious that the great advocate 
had been taken completely by surprise, but his 
amazement was nothing compared with that of 
the Fitzroy party. Lord Euston was flabber- 
gasted, and he was deathly pale as he listened to 
the questions Mr. Inderwick flung at the trembling 
man in the box. 

" You called yourself a bachelor," counsel re- 
sumed, after a pause, " but that was a lie, wasn't 
it? " 



250 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

" I ought to have said I was a widower," Smith 
explained, lamely. 

" Supposing I proved that your first wife lived 
for four years after that bogus marriage of yours 
to Lady Euston, would you be surprised ? " 
asked the barrister who was evidently enjoying 
himself. 

" I would," said the witness, with an effort 
to appear at his ease. 

" Very well, then," retorted Mr. Inderwick. 
" You may stand down. I have another witness 
to examine." 

A middle-aged man now stepped into the box 
and took the oath, and then the leading counsel 
for the defence by his first question acquainted 
all present with the fact that the newcomer was 
the brother of the first and, in fact, the only legal 
wife of George M. Smith. 

It did not take long to extract from him the 
statement that his sister had been alive when Smith 
had married Kate Cook — as Lady Euston had 
been then — and Mr. Inderwick backed up his 
evidence with a copy of the real Mrs. Smith's death 
certificate, which satisfied judge and jury that 
Smith had committed bigamy and that Kate Cook 
had never been his wife at all, for the date on 
the certificate was 1867, and Smith and Lady 
Euston had " married " in 1863. 

The sensation was profound, and when the first 
feeling of amazement passed the crowded audience 
could only stare helplessly at the woman with 
the smiling face who sat immediately behind her 



THE INCONVENIENT MARRIAGE 251 

counsel. They realised now why she had been so 
quietly confident and they showed their aston- 
ishment at the sudden and complete discomfiture 
of the Duke of Grafton and his relations. His 
grace had paid Sir Charles Russell a record fee to 
appear on behalf of his son, and, even with the 
odds so heavily against him, the famous Irishman 
made a final effort to break down the strong 
position of the defence. 

He delivered an ingenious speech, but he could 
not explain away the proved fact that George 
Smith, the alleged husband of Lady Euston, 
had had a wife alive when he had stood before the 
altar of the Catholic chapel in Glasgow and had 
sworn that there was no impediment to prevent 
him making Kate Cook his lawful wife. 

It was all there in black and white — the certifi- 
cates and every document the law required to 
establish the ex-chorus girl in the position of the 
wife of the heir to a historic title, and Sir Charles 
might call names and look black and threatening, 
but, as Mr. Inderwick pointed out, truth was 
on the side of his client, and she must have a 
verdict in her favour. 

In carefully chosen phrases the judge announced 
that Lady Euston was still the lawful wife of the 
earl, and that she had never been really married 
until she had gone through that ceremony at the 
church in Worcester. With the verdict went 
costs, but the latter item did not worry the Fitz- 
roys. It was their unexpected and signal defeat 
that rankled and the knowledge that the heir 



252 SOCIETY SENSATIONS 

was tied for life to a woman of whom he was 
ashamed. 

Someone suggested a reconciliation, and Lord 
Euston declined it. Circumstances rendered it 
impossible for him to live with his wife again, 
and he preferred to retire into the country. Lady 
Euston was given an allowance befitting her 
rank, and she behaved with good sense, lying low 
whilst the world was discussing her triumph, 
and declining the offers of music-hall agents and 
theatrical managers to turn her notoriety into gold. 

" I want no more publicity," she said to a well- 
known music-hall owner. " I'll never enter a 
court again. I've had two actions, and I want 
no more worry." 

She was referring incidentally to the occasion 
when she had had to prosecute one of the most 
rascally solicitors that ever disgraced the profes- 
sion. It will be remembered that, immediately 
on his marriage, Lord Euston settled the whole 
of his fortune — £10,000 — on his wife. This had 
been invested in gilt-edged securities, and the 
shares deposited with a lawyer of the name of 
Froggatt, the same man who took part in the 
sensational conspiracj^ of the Scotland Yard 
detectives. 

Froggatt 's practice had never been a good one, 
and his extravagant style of living kept him on 
the verge of bankruptcy for years, but it was 
owing to a financial crisis which threatened to 
land him in the dock that he was tempted to 
embezzle the whole of Lady Euston 's dowry. 



THE INCONVENIENT MARRIAGE 253 

When her ladyship learned that she had been 
robbed she applied for a warrant, and Froggatt 
was arrested and committed for trial. He had 
just served two years for conspiracy, and at his 
second appearance at the Old Bailey he was given 
seven years' penal servitude. 

This happened while Lord Euston was in Aus- 
tralia, but he never exhibited any interest in the 
case, and his relations studiously avoided referring 
to it. They were too busy with their inquiries 
to bother about the financial misadventures of 
the woman they hated. 

After this abortive suit in the Divorce Court, 
Lord Euston lived in retirement, and when in 1903 
the countess died he was fifty-five. Nine years 
later he passed away, and a brother succeeded to 
the courtesy title of earl, and later to the duke- 
dom, which, as long as it exists, must remain 
associated with one of the most remarkable of 
Divorce Court dramas. 



PRINTED AT THE DEVONSHIRE PRESS, TORQUAY, ENGLAND 









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